We sometimes come across coincidences in research that are simply fascinating, even if they are of no greater moment than that. My most recent interests have been the antebellum abolitionist movement, especially the John Brown raid, and contemporary issues in ethnography. They are entirely unrelated, and yet I have discovered a point at which they overlap.
In 1945, sociologists Horace Cayton and St. Clair Drake published Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City. It was a path breaking book, well worth reading to this day. Cayton was the grandson of Hiram Revels, who was the first African-American U.S. senator, elected by the Mississippi legislature during Reconstruction. That fact is well known among sociologists.
Hiram Revel was also related to Lewis Sheridan Leary, who was killed at Harpers Ferry. Revels's grandmother was Leary's aunt. That fact is well known among John Brown scholars.
Thus, Cayton and Leary were cousins, several times removed. I don't think anyone else has ever made this connection. It is possible that even Cayton did not know of it, as he did not mention Leary in his autobiography. (Leary died in 1859; Cayton was born in 1903.)
As I said, fascinating.
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