An Unexpected E-Mail

I put my email address at the back of all my novels, inviting any reader who reached the end of the book to shoot me a message about the book. Over the eight years and eight novels, I’ve received a few messages from folks who wrote nice things about the book. Such notes always are unexpected and always make my day. If there is anything writers crave, it’s a pat on the back for our efforts.

Last week I received this email:

I hope all is well with you and your family. My name is M---- Miller and I recently read Tangled Honor and I enjoyed the book especially the historical connection. The book also has a personal connection, since I am a descendant of Levi Miller's brother Johnson Miller. I have been conducting genealogical research into Levi's interesting life and the lives of his parents. I recently uncovered Levi's Will which provides clues and in some cases confirmation of the identity of his parents and siblings. If possible, would you be able to provide any additional information about Levi's life prior to the war. Thanks again for the read! Have a great day.

Blow me away. You see, Levi Miller in my novel Tangled Honor is based on a real-life Levi Miller who was an enslaved man, ‘owned’ by my ancestor McBride’s in Lexington, Virginia. Twenty years ago, not long after discovering Levi Miller through a 1921 newspaper article at the time of his death, I wrote a magazine article titled, “JJ McBride, Levi Miller, and Me.”

During the Civil War, the enslaved Levi Miller was the ‘body servant’—the personal slave—of my great-great-uncle Confederate Captain JJ McBride. Here’s a post- war portrait of old JJ.

Captain McBride was twice seriously wounded in battle and twice Levi Miller nursed him back to health. Most remarkably, there is solid documentation that Levi Miller once fought with Captain McBride’s infantry company (Co. C, 5^th Texas Infantry), defending a trench at Petersburg against an assault by Union soldiers, an action so unusual it earned Levi approval for a Confederate soldier’s pension.

The real Levi Miller is listed in a US Census as being ‘Mulatto ’ having one white parent. In the times of American southern slavery, the white parent would be the father. Go figure. The diary of the historical Richmond socialite Mary Chesnut succinctly addresses ‘the thing we cannot name’ within Southern culture.

“Every lady tells you who is the father of all the Mulatto children in everybody’s household, but those in her own, she seems to think drop from the clouds or pretends so to think.”

 So, in my three ‘Honor’ novels about Captain JJ McBee and Levi Miller during the Civil War, I took the literary license to make the unmarried McBee the father of Levi Miller, Levi’s birth being the unintended consequence of JJ’s coming-of-age tryst with an enslaved woman. My speculation of a slowly-growing and reluctantly acknowledged father-son bond between the two men is a central feature of the three novels. No doubt the positive familial relationship I created between the two characters is absolute utter fiction, but I think it made a good story, and such reflects the time and place. As importantly, to me personally, perhaps it made me feel better about my slave-owning ancestors to take a bare set of facts and spin a positive, if fictional, connection beyond whatever was the actual case.

Back to Mr. M. Miller’s email, I also feel really good that a member of Levi Miller’s modern family reached out to me. We have traded some documents. He sent me a copy of Levi Miller’s will. I sent him a disturbing handwritten list of slaves owned by my 3-great-grandfather, Isaiah McBride, all the children of a slave named Anna, and I sent this old postcard from the Jim Crow era, promoting Levi Miller as a ‘Confederate soldier.’

So, an odd Easter morning blog post. But the unexpected connection with my old family history has made Holy Week one for me to remember.

 And most importantly, remember,

Christ is Risen!  He is risen, indeed. 

Have a great day.