My grandmother was a cousin of Joel Chandler Harris, and we are also somehow related to Stephen Foster.
Good luck with your trip planning!
That's so great! As you may know, as an illegitimate child Harris was no friend of the Old South and wished to see it buried . . . though he inexplicably described Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin as defenses of slavery.
Stephen Collins Foster (a native of Pittsburgh) was a great supporter of Black American culture, as apparently was Ohio native Daniel Decatur Emmett, the writer of the song Dixie. When his song became the unofficial "national anthem" of the Confederacy he actually said he regretted writing it because it had become the anthem of treason.
Isn't it amazing that a Black minstrel song was adopted by "racist rednecks" as "their" anthem while Blacks and their "supporters" hate it?
Good luck with your trip planning!
Thank you.