S05 E11: Finding Lost Enslaved Family Freedmen's Newspaper Adverts with Prof. Judy Giesberg

12/06/21 • 61 min

Poignant and moving beyond measure: the newspaper advertisements placed by formerly enslaved people looking for loved ones from all over the United States can be packed with genealogical researchable information. The names of family members left behind, the names of enslavers, and places of enslavement often feature in these adverts. The emotion and longing behind their desire to re-connect with long-lost family due to slavery leap out in so many of the adverts that were placed.In our research, we have found ads which date from 1863 to 1902. Newspapers like Philadelphia's Christian Recorder, the newspaper of the AME Church; New Orleans' Black Republican, Nashville’s The Colored Tennessean, Charleston's South Carolina Leader, the Free Men's Press of Galveston, Texas, and Cincinnati's The Colored Citizen represent a handful of papers which ran these advertisements.While the language used is sometimes sparse, the ads represent the deep family ties that endured through slavery, the Civil War, and beyond slavery - despite the best effort of enslavers to sever those ties. In some instances, the ads were placed decades after the family members had last been in contact.In this episode, we talk about the genealogical importance of these ads for African American genealogists...and where to find them.We were so pleased to welcome Prof. Judy Giesberg of Villanova University to the show. She is the director of the Digital project "Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery". We are excited to have her join the conversation.The Information Wanted website: http://informationwanted.org

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S05 E10: Book Club Reminiscences Of My Life In Camp With The 33d USCT By Susie King Taylor (1)

Our book clubs have become so popular that we can't wait for our third book chat!Black narratives of the Civil War are few. Susie King Taylor’s 1902 slender volume, "Reminiscences of My Life in Camp", is written with earnest simplicity. Her account records the wartime camp experience of a woman born into slavery who was a regimental laundress and nurse in the Thirty-third United States Colored Infantry for 4 years. Like our other book clubs, this book will stay with you long after you have finished reading it. And there are some surprising things Taylor says about the lived Black experience in America at the time of publication (1902) that directly link to events that have occurred in the very recent past. You can download the book for free via https://archive.org/details/reminiscencesofm00tayl

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S05 E12: Bringing Slave Cabins To Life With Holographic Technology With Jason Church

Original surviving slave cabins and tenant farmer cabins have largely disappeared from the United State’s landscape. The humblest of dwellings, they stand as a poignant and powerful reminder of a time that the United States would rather forget. These buildings stand as a testament to the strength and resilience of the enslaved, and then oppressed, people who once lived out theirs within them. Jason Church joined the show to talk about the preservation of slave and tenant farmer cabins. He is currently engaged in creating holograms of surviving structures. He shared his passion for the work, its importance...and what goes into creating and managing such a unique preservation project. This project is part of The National Center for Preservation Technology, which falls under the National Park Service.Jason is the Chief of Technical Services at NCPTT. He coordinates and works to further develop the Center’s national cemetery training initiative and related research.

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