What's in a name? A double reckoning for Lofton County, VA.
While the pandemic allowed the opportunity to do so quietly, the new owners of Lofton National Bank decided to change the nameplate just a little.
There were many, many relatives of the Lofton family whose initials could have been added, but, since 1865, one set had been scrupulously avoided by the known members of the Lofton family there because of truth the family in Virginia suppressed in order to keep confusion down in the family, and to capitalize on the worship that General Joseph James Lofton got for dying a hero both to the Confederacy and to the Union (quite a feat, indeed!) and younger brother Major Jonathan Lofton got for taking care of Confederate and later veterans at the Veteran's Lodge.
As long as all the evidence remained on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line, it was tolerable. But then the new owners of Lofton National Bank added “F.J.” to the nameplate before the name Lofton, and just like that, Frederick James Lofton jumped back across the Mason-Dixon line and forced Lofton County to deal with its long, long bright bronze history.
Now it was not like there were not more important things to deal with, like surviving the pandemic. F.J. Lofton National Bank was on a fantastic footing and did not change after the initials were added; all of its customers of all colors were receiving good service and help, and federal assistance monies to the county were clearing through there as rapidly as through name-brand banks, although at a smaller scale.
There was really no good reason for the security cameras at the bank to be capturing vandalism attempts every other night, and security officers knocking folks down and out and carting them over to the nearest jail in Big Loft, VA.
“Pop-Pop, at the high school it is a total uproar – I mean, we're all on Zoom but still!” young Thomas Stepforth III said to his grandfather. “They got the football coach last night and an assistant principal last week! What is going on?”
“Well, grandson,” Mr. Stepforth said, “it has to do with something old Gen. Lofton said a long time ago: everybody just isn't ready for certain grandfathers to love certain grandsons, harmless though that innocent bright bronze boy might be.”
“Joseph James Lofton had a mulatto grandson?” Tom said.
“Quiet as it is kept, yes,” Mr. Stepforth said. “That's not the problem. The problem is that he loved him anyway, and got someone else to love him enough to carry out his will.”
“Gen. Lofton, as a child in the early 1800s, once witnessed something his father did that he could not endure seeing,” Mr. Stepforth said. “Young Joseph intervened and stopped it, but his life was changed forever. This is why Gen. Lofton only bought slaves to free them, and why he imposed a strict rule on his own son, Colonel Frederick Lofton: if you mistreat a Black person, I will disown you. The problem was, Col. Lofton got drunk one night and broke the rule.”
“The details of all that do not pass our family discussion standards for those under 18 -- but as God still does today, He has these backup plans called grandparents! See, the old general had lost his wife and all seven of his grandchildren, and had nearly died from grief after losing the seventh one – but then here comes Fred, all full of health and beauty and trust and love and in need of safety and healing.”
“The eighth grandchild, although I'm sure the colonel lied to him,” Tom said.
“Of course, and the general didn't want to disown him, and so swallowed that and the lie that the colonel would be right back as soon as he got things settled down at home. Seven years later –.”
“I guess deadbeat dads do come in all colors,” Tom said, shaking his head.
“Yes, but, God knows what He is doing. Fred's mother's parents had raised him in the Lord to age 5, and Fred's father's father Gen. Lofton was an equally Godly man, and raised him up to the Civil War. Their bond would be tested by the Civil War and Gen. Lofton's decision, because Fred came to understand that the Loftons were in essence fighting against his full-Black grandparents and siblings. He thus turned spy for the Union and did a bit more than that when the Confederacy kidnapped Black people in Pennsylvania before Gettysburg –.”
“What?” Tom said. “I mean, he couldn't have been older than I am now!”
“He was 11 at the beginning, 15 at the end,” Mr. Stepforth said. “But, he still loved and took care of his grandfather who had taken care of him, which is why old Gen. Lofton lived as long as he did, long enough to write a record-keeping relative of his to find out the truth about Fred – and himself.”
“You see, Gen. Lofton saw himself in Fred, in more ways than one. Gen. Lofton had never forgotten what happened after he and his mother had defended that slave – his father had put them and younger children Jonathan and Beatrice out, and they had gone to his mother's home region. There, many Black, Native, and mixed people reached out to them and cared for them. Turns out they were his mother's relatives. Gen. Lofton's grandfather's name was Frederick – Frederick Solton, a mulatto. His daughter, Myrtle, was a white-passing quadroon. So, according to the one-drop rule...”
Tom jumped.
“Joseph James Lofton would have been called an octoroon – by the one-drop rule, he was Black, too!” he cried.
“Black right along with his mulatto grandfather Fred and his bit-more-than-mulatto grandson Fred,” Mr. Stepforth said.
“So Lofton County – according to its own racist rules – is named for two Black men!” Tom said. “That literally changes everything about the history of this county!”
“And so that little 'F.J.' that Frederick Jubilee Lofton VI helped hang up with you is our public declaration of the truth that will now come out,” Mr. Stepforth said. “Gen. Lofton left his already rich brother Major Lofton everything inside Virginia and left Frederick everything outside Virginia – 90 percent of his fortune. So the Black Loftons, from the Lofton brothers onward, have all been wealthier than their full-White cousins! That, too, is coming out – Frederick Jubilee Lofton IV is part owner with me of the bank now, and someday, you and F.J. the Sixth will be!”
“Well,” Tom said, “it took a long time, but, Lofton County is about to learn an important lesson about its persistent racism: play stupid games, win stupid prizes!”
“Oh, the stupid prizes here are immense,” Mr. Stepforth said. “When Lofton County reckons with what Gen. Lofton pulled off, sooner or later someone is going to ask the question of who was the executor of his will and got all that done – in the middle of the Civil War, in the middle of Virginia, and got Fred out with his inheritance intact.”
Tom thought about it, and then his jaw dropped.
“Pop-Pop,” he said after a few moments, “the only name bigger than Lofton around here is –.”
“On the ballot, running for sheriff, in the person of his nephew, three or four times removed,” Mr. Stepforth said. “We want him to replace Sheriff Nottingham, so we will wait until after the election on all of it, but, yes, grandson, you are right. The stupid games of racism are really big. The prizes, growing in this county for 155 years, are going to be equally big.”