Margaret Seidler’s book, “Payne-Ful” Business: Charleston’s Journey To Truth, is going to be known in the future as a pivotal point in changing history.
Margaret has not written “another” book about slavery, it is not a memoir where she feels sorry for her circumstances, it is a wake-up call to embrace the kind of knowledge that has never been presented to us like this before and to use that knowledge to move all of us forward in a way that is actually achievable.
Together with the artist, John W. Jones, Margaret has created a treatise that gives the reader a visual, and visceral, portrayal of slavery that even those of us who have been clueless, can embrace and try to understand.
The book begins with a history of Charleston, economic forces in Charleston which include slavery, as well as Margaret’s own background and family story. Her grandmother held a clue about what was to come when she gave Margaret’s cousin some handwritten notes with the names of relatives, many of whom were from New York. That was 1983 and Margaret’s own prejudice precluded any interest in having any Yankee cousins so she didn’t pay much attention.
Then we fast forward to 2015 when the massacre occurred at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. Greatly shaken by this, through a series of events Margaret became involved in bringing the community together after this unspeakable tragedy.
Soon after that, Margaret and her husband, Bob, began attending weekly services at Mount Zion African Episcopal (AME) Church. It happened to be the church next door to Grace Episcopal, her family church where she was raised. Margaret remembered that as a teenager she was curious about why she could hear all the singing and clapping and wondered why those parishioners seemed so joyful. The answer to that became apparent when she and Bob found themselves in the wonderful community of Mt. Zion.
At this point, Margaret was ensconced in the Black community on several levels. And then things changed when Margaret went back into the website to revisit the results of a DNA test she had taken years ago and found a note waiting for her from a Black cousin. The thought of this didn’t faze her at all; she was, in fact, proud to be .1 percent West African in addition to her 99.7 percent Western European heritage.
Her delight quickly faded:
“Using my grandmother’s handwritten notes, I searched the web for the name of John Torrans, my fifth great grandfather from New York. … The synopsis provided by the South Carolina Historical Society read ‘John Torrans was a partner in the firm of Torrans, Greg, and Poaug … The firm was responsible for bringing a number of Huguenots (1764) to Charleston from England, and hundreds of slaves to Charleston from Africa.”’
Margaret digested that information:
“Then I began to cry and scream. … I kept screaming and couldn’t stop. The pain was shooting through my entire body, it felt like the screams were coming from my toes.”
It went downhill from there as Margaret goes on to detail much about the business of slave trading, how it affected the local economy, and how the auctions were conducted. This led her to find that her fourth great grandfather was William Payne, who as it turns out, had been very wealthy from his career as an auctioneer of not only estates, buildings, furnishings, but also 9,268 enslaved human beings. Not only was his firm one of many such domestic slave trading businesses in Charleston, but also his was the largest.
With diligent research, Margaret found over 1,100 advertisements that William Payne & Sons had placed in newspapers for those auctions. “In one ad, a house and lot on the west side of Charleston called Harleston’s Green was advertised for sale. I was astounded by the financing options. ‘The terms are cash. Negroes will be taken in exchange, or part cash and part Negroes.’”
As luck would have it—because by now, Margaret certainly did need some luck—it turned out that the well-respected art gallery of Chuma Nwokike contacted Margaret to let her know that one of their long time featured artists, John W. Jones, was interested in her Payne & Sons domestic slave trade research. Well known for his book, Confederate Currency, The Color of Money, Mr. Jones wanted to create a series of paintings based on the advertisements. He created sixty paintings, which he gifted to Margaret; thirty-four of them are in the book, the others may be seen at some of their talks and exhibits.
Some of the real beauty in Mr. Jones’s paintings is revealed in the way he portrays his subjects. As Margaret says, “I found myself overcome by the emotions of seeing them no longer as enslaved. He was respectfully lifting up the enslaved described as skilled human beings living in this community.” Mr. Jones’s artwork is an integral part of the book, because it is through his images that you see the humanity he has bestowed upon his subjects and you almost want to pull up a chair and ask them to tell you about what they are doing.
Margaret Seidler
Margaret has documented all of her research in this book with easy to find references rather than footnotes. The back of the book also includes all of her newspaper ad research by ad date, number enslaved by ad, and ad details. She also provides information for those looking for ways to trace their ancestry.
As a Certified Polarity Thinking Master, and a retired Organization and Leadership Development consultant, Margaret possesses the necessary skills to think out of the conventional box and have a more global approach to solving problems.
Margaret’s unflinching accounting of this part of her family history, is for lack of a better word, appalling. Yet somehow, she has managed to take this travesty and turn it into a platform for healing and inclusion:
“I wanted to support people who look like me in their development of empathy for the Black experience; then to find effective ways to hold the truth, share that truth and take steps to build bridges with those of different backgrounds and cultures. My hope is to serve as a role model by providing examples of what we have done so far.”
Click here to purchase a copy at Buxton Books.
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