Trivia 1-20-17 Family Ties & Bonus!

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Anna Deavere Smith (born September 18, 1950) is an American actress, playwright, and professor. What is her direct familial relationship to the Civil War?

credit: @lelliott19

Bonus: Name the famous British actress who became an anti-slavery plantation owner.

Credit: @JohnW.
 
1. Her great-great-grandfather Basil Biggs was a free man, and census records show that he was married to Mary Jackson and still free in 1850, more than a decade before the Civil War. Basil was a veterinarian and moved his family from Maryland to Pennsylvania. Only five years after moving, Basil found himself in the middle of the Battle of Gettysburg. An obituary for Celia Biggs Penn (Basil’s daughter) notes that they were the only colored family in the area and fled the advancing Confederate troops. During the battle, Confederate soldiers turned Basil’s home into a field hospital, and when the family returned, their farm was in ruins and littered with rotting corpses.

Basil was contracted to remove the bodies from the field, and he and his 8-10 employees took on the unsavory task of exhuming Union soldiers from shallow graves and reinterring the bodies in the neatly ordered row that would become Gettysburg National Cemetery, the location of Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address.

After building the cemetery, Basil used the money he earned to rebuild his life and buy a new farm. A newspaper article about Basil reported: “He’s a veterinary surgeon and is reputed to be the wealthiest Afro-American in Gettysburg.” Anna didn’t understand why her whole family didn’t want to talk about this impressive individual. She was even more shocked when she saw his obituary which read: “Leading colored citizen was an active agent in the Underground Railroad.” Basil was a conductor, as his veterinary practice allowed him to travel without suspicion, though what he was doing was a federal offense and extremely risky.
https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/findi...th-discovers-underground-railroad-connection/


2. Frances Anne "Fanny" Kemble
 
Her great-great-grandfather Basil Biggs was a free man, and census records show that he was married to Mary Jackson and still free in 1850, more than a decade before the Civil War. Basil was a veterinarian and moved his family from Maryland to Pennsylvania. Only five years after moving, Basil found himself in the middle of the Battle of Gettysburg. An obituary for Celia Biggs Penn (Basil’s daughter) notes that they were the only colored family in the area and fled the advancing Confederate troops. During the battle, Confederate soldiers turned Basil’s home into a field hospital, and when the family returned, their farm was in ruins and littered with rotting corpses.

Basil was contracted to remove the bodies from the field, and he and his 8-10 employees took on the unsavory task of exhuming Union soldiers from shallow graves and reinterring the bodies in the neatly ordered row that would become Gettysburg National Cemetery, the location of Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address.

After building the cemetery, Basil used the money he earned to rebuild his life and buy a new farm. A newspaper article about Basil reported: “He’s a veterinary surgeon and is reputed to be the wealthiest Afro-American in Gettysburg.” Anna didn’t understand why her whole family didn’t want to talk about this impressive individual. She was even more shocked when she saw his obituary which read: “Leading colored citizen was an active agent in the Underground Railroad.” Basil was a conductor, as his veterinary practice allowed him to travel without suspicion, though what he was doing was a federal offense and extremely risky.
source-https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/findi...th-discovers-underground-railroad-connection/

bonus-Fanny Kemble
source-http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1569.html
 
Her great-great-grandfather Basil Biggs, a free man married Mary Jackson, was a veterinarian and eventually moved to a town called Gettysburg. During the battle, they fled their home, it became a Confederate hospital and when they finally got home it was littered with “rotting corpse”, and eventually would be contracted to bury Union dead and that land would become the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Also it was learned that due to his job as veterinarian, he traveled quite a bit he was able to participate in the Underground Railroad.
https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/findi...th-discovers-underground-railroad-connection/

Bonus: Frances Anne (Fanny) Kemble
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1569.html
 
Regular question:
Her great-grandfather Basil Biggs was a free man and citizen of Gettysburg at the time of battle. His family was the only colored family in the area. He was a conductor in the Underground Railroad
After the battle he and his employees helped bury the Union dead in the Gettysburg National Cemetary. Interesting story:

upload_2017-1-20_14-27-46.png

https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/findi...th-discovers-underground-railroad-connection/



Bonus:

That probably was Frances Anne "Fanny" Kemble
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fanny_Kemble&oldid=756835103
 
Her great-great-grandfather Basil Biggs.

Basil Biggs was contracted to remove the bodies from the Gettysburg Battlefield, and he and his 8-10 employees took on the unsavory task of exhuming Union soldiers from shallow graves and reinterring the bodies in the neatly ordered row that would become Gettysburg National Cemetery, the location of Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address.

https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/findi...th-discovers-underground-railroad-connection/

Bonus.

She was Frances Anne "Fanny" Kemble.

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/fanny-kemble-1809-1893
 
Apparently not slavery - at least, not during the war. Her great-greats were free people by that time.

Her great-great-grandfather, Basil Biggs, owned a farm at Gettysburg that was used by the Confederates as a hospital and later was ruined before he could return. Biggs and several companions buried 3500 bodies of Union soldiers in what became the National Cemetery.

Finding Your Roots, Season 2: The Official Companion to the PBS Series
By Henry Louis Gates Jr
.
upload_2017-1-20_15-53-56.png

upload_2017-1-20_15-55-40.png


Bonus: Fanny Kemble

Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Reprinting and the Embodied Book
By Jessica DeSpain

upload_2017-1-20_16-3-30.png
 
1) Anna Deavere Smith's great-great-grandfather Basil Biggs was a free man but found himself in the middle of the Battle of Gettysburg as the only African-American family in the area and had to flee the advancing Confederate troops. During the battle, Confederate soldiers turned Basil’s home into a field hospital, and when the family returned, their farm was in ruins and littered with rotting corpses. Basil was contracted to remove the bodies from the field, and he and his employees took on the task of exhuming Union soldiers from shallow graves and reinterring the bodies in the neatly ordered row that would become Gettysburg National Cemetery, the location of Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address.
2) Bonus: Fanny Kemble
 
Her great-great-grandfather Basil Biggs was a free man, and census records show that he was married to Mary Jackson and still free in 1850, more than a decade before the Civil War. Basil was a veterinarian and moved his family from Maryland to Pennsylvania. Only five years after moving, Basil found himself in the middle of the Battle of Gettysburg. An obituary for Celia Biggs Penn (Basil’s daughter) notes that they were the only colored family in the area and fled the advancing Confederate troops. During the battle, Confederate soldiers turned Basil’s home into a field hospital, and when the family returned, their farm was in ruins and littered with rotting corpses.

Basil was contracted to remove the bodies from the field, and he and his 8-10 employees took on the unsavory task of exhuming Union soldiers from shallow graves and reinterring the bodies in the neatly ordered row that would become Gettysburg National Cemetery, the location of Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address.
 
friday: her gggrantfather basil ´biggs was afree man and a veterinarian - his home was in the middle of the battle of gettysburg - after the fighting (he had run from the grey guys) he dug up the dead on his farm from their shallow graves and reinterred them in what was to become gettysburg national cementry, the place where a certain abraham l held some sort of a speach shortly after the battle.

bonus: frances anne kemble

source friday
source bonus
 
We're in the theater today!

Friday question: Per https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/findi...th-discovers-underground-railroad-connection/:
"Her great-great-grandfather Basil Biggs was a free man, and census records show that he was married to Mary Jackson and still free in 1850, more than a decade before the Civil War. Basil was a veterinarian and moved his family from Maryland to Pennsylvania. Only five years after moving, Basil found himself in the middle of the Battle of Gettysburg. An obituary for Celia Biggs Penn (Basil’s daughter) notes that they were the only colored family in the area and fled the advancing Confederate troops. During the battle, Confederate soldiers turned Basil’s home into a field hospital, and when the family returned, their farm was in ruins and littered with rotting corpses.

"Basil was contracted to remove the bodies from the field, and he and his 8-10 employees took on the unsavory task of exhuming Union soldiers from shallow graves and reinterring the bodies in the neatly ordered row that would become Gettysburg National Cemetery, the location of Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address." [emphasis mine]

". . . his obituary which read: “Leading colored citizen was an active agent in the Underground Railroad.” Basil was a conductor, as his veterinary practice allowed him to travel without suspicion, though what he was doing was a federal offense and extremely risky."

Irrelevant comment--I hadn't heard of this lady before; she and her one-woman-theater sound extremely interesting!

Bonus: Fanny Kemble
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/fanny-kemble-1809-1893
 
Main question: Smith's great-great-grandfather, a free black man named Basel Biggs, lived near Gettysburg and had to flee as Confederate troops advanced upon his land. After the battle, he returned and supervised a group of men who buried Union soldiers who had fallen on the battlefield in the area that would become the Gettysburg National Cemetery.

Bonus: Fanny Kemble.
 
Last edited:
Basil Biggs, her Great great great grandfather, and her great great grandmother were free people of color who owned a farm in Gettysburg, PA and the CS army demanded them to leave and subsequently turned their farm into a field hospital

Edit - No answer given for bonus question.

Hoosier
 
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