on my grandmother's side we were very early settlers and prior to that basically farmers and robbers in scotland. too poor and marginalized to own slaves, shit barely anyone owned land. on my grandfather's side, they came a bit later but were also basically commoners and not land/slave owners. i actually researched this a number of years ago with my cousin. we found a lot of cool shit from my great great grandfather from civil war, including a medical book he published. he is where any money comes from in my dad's family, got into copper mining and had a very successful medical practice.