Descendants of Norwich slave, owner meet

Posted in Articles, History, Media Archive, Slavery, United States on 2013-10-03 05:00Z by Steven

Descendants of Norwich slave, owner meet

Norwich Bulletin
Norwich, Connecticut
2012-03-29

Adam Benson

Norwich, Conn.—When descendants of Norwich slave Guy Drock and the man who owned him met  for the first time Thursday, they weren’t sure what would happen.

Grant Hayter-Menzies’ fifth-generation great-grandfather, Capt. Benejah Bushnell, owned Drock for a decade in the mid-1700s in Norwich.

Hayter-Menzies, of British Columbia; Daryl D’Angelo, of Amherst, N.H.; and her cousin, Donald Roddy, of Spokane, Wash. — all of them white — came to Karen Cook’s U.S. history class at Norwich Free Academy with a story they said had to be told.

“I don’t have any of the cultural and social legacies of someone who grew up identified as an African-American, and I still had a moment of, ‘What does this guy want from me,’” D’Angelo said of meeting Hayter-Menzies.

Hayter-Menzies was apprehensive, too…

… Roddy, a retired airline pilot, said he stumbled across his Drock lineage several years ago, while doing genealogical research on his family.

“I had no idea I had African ancestors until a few years ago,” Roddy said. “No one in my living family had a clue about that.”

Hayter-Menzies said he’s forged a unique bond with D’Angelo and Roddy, and quickly felt a kinship with them once they finally met.

“My first reaction was to reach out and hug you,” Hayter-Menzies told D’Angelo. “We feel like friends already.”…

Read the entire article here.

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