I have read and reread the article about Malaga Island [WWF August 05] and its shameful eviction of the residents. Your article seemed to be the most comprehensive one I have read about the tragic event in 1912.
James Eli McKinney was my second cousin, four times removed. My direct McKinney grandmothers were Jane McKinney (the wife of Frederick Higgins of Georgetown and the mother of my great grandmother Sarah Higgins Oliver of Georgetown) and Rebecca McKinney, who married Henry Oliver, the Revolutionary War patriot of Georgetown…
My heart ached when I learned about the reputation that those people had because of lies told about them. My father, James Oliver of Bay Point Road in Georgetown, had a first cousin, Ethel Heal Harford that was Mulatto. His aunt Selina died leaving Ethel (age 5) to be raised by her Oliver grandparents. Willie O. Stanwood (Heal) was Selina’s husband, and the father to Ethel. He was Mulatto, and his mother Eliza Howard (Mulatto) from South Carolina and his father was White and from Georgetown. That is how I became interested in learning about the Mulatto population close by in Malaga. What a sad account.
Sharon Oliver Knape
Omaha, Nebraska