Bibb Country

Unearthing My Family Secrets of Land, Legacy—and Lettuce

De: Lonnae O’Neal

Part memoir, food history, and cultural critique, Bibb Country explores Lonnae O’Neal’s journey as she details six generations of her family history against the sweep of American history using, in part, the gourmet lettuce named for the Kentucky Bibb family of enslavers as her unlikely lens.

Five years ago, Andscape Senior Writer Lonnae O’Neal grabbed some seeds for her summer garden, which included seeds for Bibb lettuce. Lonnae would soon begin to unearth the ways Bibb lettuce is so much closer than her backyard garden—she is a direct descendant of Bibbtown. Of a grandmother named Susie Bibb and of those enslaved and later emancipated by Maj. Richard Bibb, whose family wealth and power were foundational to America.

Her fourth great-grandmother, Keziah, was enslaved by the Bibbs, including John Bigger Bibb, who developed the Bibb lettuce strain that remains a delicacy more than 150 years later. John Bigger Bibb was executor of his father’s will, which freed Keziah and dozens of other Black Bibbs in 1840 and left them with a potent, complicated legacy.

It is widely believed that Maj. Bibb fathered fathered one of Keziah’s granddaughters. And another plantation master, whose identity is shrouded in mystery, fathered Keziah’s grandson, who is the beginning of the line for our author.

For years, the author researched her family connections, attending a joint reunion with Bibbs, Black and white, and working backward through her family, which bore the privileges and scars of the Black Bibbs migration from Kentucky to Southern Illinois and beyond. The reunion was photographed by ESPN for this title. She and the other Black Bibb descendants have recently received 43 acres of the Bibbtown land deeded to her ancestors more than a century ago.

For those who devoured the mega-best seller The 1619 Project and High on the Hog, which became a Netflix special—this listener is primed for this book.

©2025 Lonnae O'Neal (P)2025 Audible, Inc.