Prior to 1870, slaves were considered property and therefore had no surname. Matter of fact, most slave owners identified their “personal human property” by their age and value. However, for those slaves who were lucky enough to make it to ninety or above in age, the slave owner would acknowledge them on documents by their first name. In the years following the Civil War, former slaves had to choose a surname. Most freed slaves took on the surname of their former owners, in our family case; it was Troup, after owner George M. Troup. The 1870 Census was the first census to enumerate black citizens. In that year, fifty-one Laurens County families bore the surname of Troup or Trouppe. Just before the turn of the century some of the families changed their last name to Edmond. These families were not all related to each other by blood, but they were bound together by their common last name and heritage, lived in the Dudley area, near or on the old Troup plantations at Valambrosa and Thomas Crossroads. As the Edmond & Troup family began to branch out and have their own offspring, some continued to us the name Troup as it was originally spelled -- where others chose to add an 'e' to it to now be known as Troupe. On the other hand, those family members who went from Troup to Edmond also made the decision to change up their surname by a letter when they added a ‘s’ to Edmond and became known as the Edmonds. Ironically, we currently have some family groups who have siblings who go by Troup, Edmond, Troupe, and Edmonds in one single family group.