I don’t know what led me on a genelogical expedition this week, but I found the family ancestral motto on the Wikipedia page.
“Vincit Qui Patitur”
It translates to “He who suffers, wins,” and could I have have a more perfect motto? No.
If only I had stopped reading there.
Sadly, just a few lines down I discovered that not only were we slave owners, we were slave traders. More Google searches showed we were the biggest slave trading family, and had I gone back a few more generation in my previous research I would have found the dreaded Balthazar who ran the whole North America – Cuba – Africa triangle operation.
It was so troubling for some distant cousins that one wrote a book on it and another made a PBS documentary.
So now he who suffers, wins, has a much more sickening meaning.
2 responses to “Family History”
I feel like if my business was exclusively based on causing suffering to others, I would want a different motto from that, because that would imply a future extraordinary smackdown by those who suffer, presumably onto me. But. Family motto is family motto, and odds are decent no one ever thought particularly about it.
KC – Well, chronologically, the motto came before the slave trading. I’m not defending them, though.