Contributor
Margaret Seidler
Margaret Seidler, The Accidental Historian, is a retired Organization Development consultant, master trainer, and author. She was born and raised in Charleston. At age 65, she discovered her Charleston roots were deeper than she had ever been told when DNA testing revealed distant cousins of African descent. It was one cousin’s request to find common ancestors that drove Margaret’s more than 400 hours of family research. Shocking results yielded both those ancestral connections and that William Payne, her 4th great-grandfather, brokered the sale of more than 9200 human beings through his Broad Street office location. Over 1100 newspaper ads confirmed the magnitude and details of the vibrant Charleston domestic slave trade between 1800-1834.