Donna Lawrence

By Donna Lawrence

A reach for understanding of an unknowable past.

My grandmother wrote a genealogy tracing her family, the Corbins of Virginia, and it was fun to flip through the slender book and find interesting connections. Some of it was speculation. One Hanna Corbin married John Augustine Washington, brother of George Washington. She may have been connected to our family of Corbins—that was uncertain. But one connection that Grandma was sure of was William Tappico, King of the Wiccocomico Indians of the Algonquin tribes, whose granddaughter, called Mary Tapp, wed our ancestor, John Corbin in 1799. My dad was so proud of that, our Native American blood. But, among the records of births and marriages and deaths, one entry stopped me cold. It was the last will and testament of William Corbin of Culpeper County, who died on December 3, 1796: “I give and bequeath unto my son Benjamin Corbin one Negro wench Sarah and her child Lydia and all their future increase.” Reading those words, I forgot to breathe.

By Donna Lawrence

A view of another woman’s life.

The road to the Maasai village is gouged with deep holes and littered with rocks. It is barely a road at all. Our Land Cruiser slows to a crawl to tip and sway through a gully. The Maasai don’t need to keep their road in good condition. They don’t need a road at all. They walk.