Email From Gary Aden to Gary aden
Email Dated 5/26/2001 

   THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF WILLIAM ALLEN: 

      I find it appropriate since the attached will speaks for itsefl to
take editorial license. I must admit that the first time I read that my
progenitor ancestor had bequeathed Negroes, I was taken aback. I
shouldn't have been surprised, but somehow seeing it in handwriting and
eventually typewritten startled me somehow. What was I thinking? That I
was above that; that I wouldn't have enslaved labor if creating arable
land out of pine forests was the difference between success and failure
in the New World; that my wife could raise a big family and help me tend
the farm at the same time without help; and why the big family in the
first place? Yes, birth control measures left something to be desired,
but the kids when adults were your retirement plan- they would work the
plantation when you were too feeble. And it's not as if the "plantation"
owners were sitting around sipping mint julips all day- they and their
families often overworked themselves into an early grave, if they
weren't killed by Indians or desperadoes first. 

       Ironic, isn't it, that less than a century after this will was
written, Irish immigrants from another era built the Baltimore
Chesapeake Bridge because they were "cheaper and more expendable" than
negroes.