Tangled Journeys - by Lori D Ginzberg (Paperback)

About the Book

"In 1830 Richard Walpole Cogdell, a husband, father, and bank clerk in Charleston, South Carolina, purchased a fifteen-year-old enslaved girl, Sarah Martha Sanders. Before her death in 1850, she bore nine of his children, five of whom reached adulthood. In 1857, this all-too-ordinary story took an extraordinary turn when Cogdell and his enslaved children moved to Philadelphia, where he bought them a house and where they became, virtually overnight, part of the African American middle class. An ambitious historical narrative about the Sanders family, Tangled Journeys tells a multigenerational, multiracial story that is both traumatic and prosaic. At the same time, through what Ginzberg calls 'whispers'--questions that the available evidence cannot answer but that force us to confront what was unseen, unheard, and undocumented--the author invites readers into the process of American history making, drawing back the curtain on the evidence historians encounter and interpret, and examining how this process reshapes our understanding of the past"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

In 1830 Richard Walpole Cogdell, a husband, father, and bank clerk in Charleston, South Carolina, purchased a fifteen-year-old enslaved girl, Sarah Martha Sanders. Before her death in 1850, she bore nine of his children, five of whom reached adulthood. In 1857, Cogdell and his enslaved children moved to Philadelphia, where he bought them a house and where they became, virtually overnight, part of the African American middle class. An ambitious historical narrative about the Sanders family, Tangled Journeys tells a multigenerational, multiracial story that is both traumatic and prosaic while forcing us to confront what was unseen, unheard, and undocumented in the archives, and thereby inviting us into the process of American history making itself.

Review Quotes

"A thoughtful reconstruction of a family and its linkages to significant, though often overlooked, aspects of American history. . . . Recommended."--CHOICE

"Ginzberg meticulously unravels the 'tangled' threads of a family's fascinating story. . . . And she does so with an intense vulnerability rarely seen in academic publications. . . . [A]n ambitious, deeply compelling, and mildly frustrating book, as Ginzberg's own exasperation with history's 'infuriating gaps' jumps off the page. . . . It constantly pushed me to confront the difficulties of doing history alongside the joy we get from telling a good story."--Journal of Southern History

"Ginzberg wonders what may have shaped or forced her subjects' decisions, inviting the reader to share in that frustration and guesswork. It has the effect of teaching the reader that they, too, are 'making' history."--American Historical Review

"Lori D. Ginzberg has written another masterful book. . . . This book is an important template for writing a family's journey entangled by standard themes of American historical narrative: a depiction of how slavery, freedom, economic change, war, and racial violence collide with feelings of ambition, loyalty, pride, shame, and love."--North Carolina Historical Review

"Readers will find Tangled Journeys a rich, well-told history that has as many unexpected turns as its title implies."--Emerging Civil War

About the Author

Lori D. Ginzberg is professor emeritus of history and women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Pennsylvania State University, as well as the author of several books, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life and Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman's Rights in Antebellum New York.