Research Source – My Maryland-Louisiana Roots

Another Great Research Find!!

I continue to be amazed by the tools available for African American genealogy researchers to find information on their ancestors prior to 1870. I had visited the Maryland State Archive site many times to obtain death records. But it wasn’t until recently that I found this Legacy of Slavery in Maryland database. Included in the database are records of manumitted slaves, freedmen who served in the Civil War, slaves listed in inventories on probates, ads for sales of slaves as well as accommodations made for run-away slaves via the ‘Underground Railway’. Users can search by county, by the names of the slave or the enslaver.

So happy to have once again stumbled upon another great find!

Best,

‘Lost Friends’ – An Amazing New Find

I began my genealogy research in 2000 at a time when very little content was available digitally or online. Microfilm and microfiche readers were the staple tool for viewing birth, death, immigration, probate and deed records. As genealogy research has become more widespread, so has the access to and transcription of important records. Freedmen Bureau letters, complaints and work contracts once available only as images that you had to scroll through to find names and places of interest are now widely accessible on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org via keyword searches.

People and organizations have been very busy providing information to help unlock the ancestral roots of once enslaved Black peoples. I recently attended a panel discussion at Prairie View A&M University’s Ruth J Simmons, Center for Race and Justice. Rice University Professor Domingues gave a presentation on the SlaveVoyages.org database. A database that has been around for quite a while that was available initially via CD-ROM access only but is now a robust digital tool. SlaveVoyages ‘explores the origins and forced relocations of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic world.’

Today, I stumbled upon a true treasure-chest–the ‘Lost Friends’ database. Included in this database are over 2,500 letters or ads in which Black families separated by slavery or separated after emancipation attempted to locate family members. The ads ran in the New Orleans Southwestern Christian Advocate newspaper November 1879 – December 1900. Content was provided by Hill Memorial Library, Louisiana State University Libraries (1879–1896) and the Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University.

I have already found ads for families that lived in Jeanerette and Franklin, Louisiana as well as those in Double Bayou, Matagorda and Bremond, Texas.

It is hard to keep my focus when such great research tools keep popping up. You can search by lastname, year or location. I have found that wide searches on parish names or county names is not as successful as searching specifically by city names. So a search for Jeanerette may produce records while a search on Iberia Parish, may not.

So, check out ‘Lost Friends’ and see what you can uncover.

Best,

So, You Live in Kansas Now!

Maybe your ancestors migrated to Kansas in the 1880s from Louisiana, Texas or some other state. The 1875 Kansas Homestead Act offered free land and a hope for many African American farmers and their families. Read more

Approximately 40,000 Blacks from across the U.S. made their way to Kansas in 1879. Many freedmen settled near the towns of Topeka, Fort Scott, Coffeyville, and Dunlap. In 1880, there were about 2080 Texas born Blacks in Kansas, over 800 in Labette County. Members of my Richardson family branch were in Labette County, Kansas in 1920.

So many families were drawn to Kansas that there soon was not enough land to accommodate them all. Many families on their trek to Kansas, found themselves diverted instead to St. Louis, Missouri and to Nebraska. Hey, maybe the title of this post should have been, “So, You Live in St. Louis, Missouri Now!”

Got a Library Card, Check Out the Chicago Defender Newspaper

Reached a dead end in tracing your African American family–one census year they were in Texas and then the entire family seemed to disappear? Maybe they moved north in search of better jobs, education or just a chance to start over again. Many people kept track of what family members were doing by reading and submitting articles to the African American newspaper, the Chicago Defender. There were regular features on the happenings in distant states. I found an article about my grandfather being on program in his church in Louisiana in 1932! That was indeed a sweet find. See where your relatives may have gone and what they may have been up to. Use that library card, sign in and read for yourself. Articles from 1910 – 1975.

Houston Library
LSU Library – Proquest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Defender
Proquest Historical Newspapers