so, so nancy weston, according to her son, nancy weston, could neither read nor write. i always preface that this is according to her sons recollection and recollection of. family members who were the westons was that nancy was adamant her sons. colored westerns as she called them so that sort of free family but that they were grim kids as well and. there's a lot of sort of historians who have done a lot of work on that. there's book by chakrabarti meyers. that's forging freedom. it's about free black women, charleston and how they kind of negotiate their lives within this sort of very racially and, sexually violent charleston at the time. and so she was somebody or nancy was somebody who definitely saw around her, particularly her own family, black, who had to become or negotiate freedom through their relationships with white men. her own sister, lydia, had sons with a family called the cardozo family. and the cardozo family were slaveholding family. but they sent the black women. they had children with to the north. and so that that those women and children lived free.

the brothers, for instance -- the raised in charleston, the mother, nancy weston, is enslaved in charleston until the end of the civil war. her son's, once their white father died, the grimke family basically cast nancy western out to live by herself in support herself. she's basically working, doing laundry. she's related to a free back family, but she herself was not free. as she's raising her blacks on, she's raising them to believe in this colored elite, as she called them. the colored westerns, who are her relatives who are free. when the civil war ended -- boys are in the early teens. nancy westham -- the boys -- eventually became -- written about -- in 1868. -- a system in any way that they could find. and so -- initially, but proximity to the sisters was -- paying for them -- this is eventually pay -- eventually start this correspondence with the brothers about how -- what schools they should apply to, where they should live, what career paths they can take. kind of become mentors to them. so that proximity and material way, at first, is a positive thing. on the other side, the issu