Both women embraced and cried over their families’ unfortunate connection. Robert was born while Northup was enslaved at the Epps place. Vanpool came up to her and introduced herself as a great-great-great-great-niece of Robert Epps - the youngest son of plantation owner Edwin Epps. Jackson was a descendant of Solomon Northup. Kellina Vanpool was in the Clerk of Court’s office doing family research when she overheard Judge Billy Bennett saying Ms. “Strangely, it didn’t move me half as much as seeing those documents in my hand.”Ī chance encounter at the courthouse also made the visit especially memorable. “I had wanted to come here and go to the Epps Plantation where he lived and worked,” Ms. It was released on video under the title Half Slave, Half Free. That PBS production, Solomon Northup’s Odyssey, aired in 1984 and again in 1985. “I had seen a movie about him in 1984 with Avery Brooks playing Solomon,” she said, “but it hadn’t really impressed on me the desire to know more.” “That’s when I became proud to be one of his descendants,” she said. They unveiled a marker commemorating his story, so she read the annotated version of Twelve Years a Slave by Dr. It wasn’t until 1999, when she attended the first “Solomon Northup Day” observance in his native Sarasota Springs, N.Y., that she got interested in his story. Jackson said she had heard a little bit about Solomon Northup when she was growing up, but not a lot. with a visit to Epps Plantation site on Bayou Bouef with Mayor Mike Robertson and then proceeded through other stops on “The Northup Trail.” Ms. She was a guest of honor at the Solomon Northup Symposium held in Bunkie on Oct. She was the first descendant to ever return to Avoyelles since her ancestor was freed here 161 years ago. Jackson, 59, lives in Alta Dena, California, near Los Angeles. The subsequent publicity and interest in Northup resulted in his descendants wanting to visit Avoyelles. His story was resurrected and brought into the limelight with the recent Academy Award-winning movie. He was finally freed at the Avoyelles Parish Courthouse in 1853.īecause Northup was educated, he was able to write the story of his experiences in his autobiography, Twelve Years a Slave, which gives one of the few firsthand accounts of slavery from someone who lived as a slave. He had been kidnapped in Washington D.C and sold into slavery in Louisiana, spending 9 of his 12 years of bondage in Avoyelles. Jackson was in Avoyelles to visit important sites in her famous ancestor’s 12 years as a slave. She apologized for breaking up, saying she did not expect to get that emotional. “This is making me shiver,” she said as she read sat in the Clerk of Court’s office in the courthouse in Marksville and read the motion concerning Solomon Northup. Holding in her trembling hands the document detailing the legal order that led to her great-great-great-grandfather’s release from slavery in Avoyelles Parish, Eileen Jackson could not contain the tears.
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