Finding Family Members after Slavery

18thVirginia

Major
Joined
Sep 8, 2012
Louis Hughes was one of many slaves who were separated from their families in Virginia and transported west to Mississippi. He survived slavery and became a husband, a father and a successful businessman in a new life in Milwaukee. Late in life, he would publish a memoir of his time as a slave, Thirty Years A Slave, From Bondage to Freedom, 1897. He would describe how he came to be reunited with his brother, Billy, when a salesman told him that there was a hotel cook in Cleveland who looked just like him. Louis traveled to Cleveland and found this long lost brother.

Billy Hughes had been back to Virginia, trying to find his mother and other Hughes brothers, but could uncover no traces of them. Reading the slave narratives, the individuals often mention a search for relatives lost through slavery and sometimes how they chanced to find their families again.

Some newly freed people started running ads in papers around the country in the final years of the Civil War, seeking to find their long lost relatives. A project between Villanova University's graduate history program and Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia has been digitizing these ads, with some 900 already completed.

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http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswi...lavery-searching-for-loved-ones-in-wanted-ads
 
The project is called "Last Seen: Finding Family after Slavery," and can be accessed here: http://informationwanted.org. Although ads ran in newspapers around the country, these are primarily from Philadelphia’s Christian Recorder, New Orleans’ Black Republican, Nashville’s the Colored Tennessean, Charleston’s South Carolina Leader, Galveston’s Free Men’s Press, and Cincinnati’s the Colored Citizen.

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The ads often offered a wealth of information about the missing family member.

INFORMATION WANTED By a mother concerning her children.

Mrs. Elizabeth Williams, who now resides in Marysville, California was formerly owned to-gether with her children, vis: Lydia, William, Allen, and Parker, by one John Petty, who lived about six miles from the town of Woodbury, Franklin County, Tenneesee. At that time she was the the wife of Sandy Rucker, and was familiarly known as Betsy, - sometimes called Betsy Petty.

About twenty-five years ago, the mother was sold to Mr. Marshal Stroud, by whom, some twelve or fourteen years later, she was, for the second time since purchased by him, taken to Arkansas. She has never seen the above named children since. Any information given concern-ing them, however, will be gratefully re-ceived by one whose love for her children sur-vives the bitterness and hardship of many long years spent in slavery.

Preachers is the neighborhood of Woodbury, Tennessee are especially requested to make in-quiry, and communicate any information they may deem valuable either by letter, or through the columns of the "Recorder."

http://informationwanted.org/items/show/1
 
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The ads generally cover a period from 1863 to 1902, but some were still running in the newspaper, The Chicago Defender, in 1910. That's a half century past the time of the Emancipation Proclamation. The ads offer testimony to the fact that slave owners may have physically separated families, but were unable to alter their attachments.
 
Some of the ads are very simple, such as this one that ran in The Black Republican in New Orleans.

MRS. RITTTY GREEN wishes to find her son
DUDLEY GREEN. Both are from Scotts
county Kentucky, near Georgetown. Any informa-
tion respecting him may be addressed to this paper.
ap29

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One of the people who did a lot of the transcriptions, Margaret Jerrido, said that it was always a little more emotional transcribing the information about mothers looking for their children than the many ads about siblings.
http://informationwanted.org/items/show/911
 
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INFORMATION WANTED.

I would like to know the where abouts of my
mother, who went by the name of Mary Jack-
son. She was owned by a man whose name
was Allan Tyler, who lived three miles east of
Brunestown and was sold down south in 1846.
The last time I heard of her, she was in New
Orleans. Any information will be thankfully
received by MATILDA HARRISON, Jeffersntown, (sp.)

 
Okay, now for the exciting news. You can sign up to help transcribe some of these ads. The LAST SEEN project has transcribed over 900 ads, but they have a newspaper with numerous ads that are awaiting transcription. If you're interested, you can contact them at the link below.

Sign Up to Transcribe
Please fill out the information below to become a transcriber. When you do, you will receive an email from MyWiki. Follow the link to change your password. While you are on MyWiki, select "preferences" and "verify my password." This will insure your transcriptions save correctly. Then return to Last Seen, sign into "Scripto," go to Browse Items, and begin transcribing!!

http://informationwanted.org/sign-up
 
Okay, now for the exciting news. You can sign up to help transcribe some of these ads. The LAST SEEN project has transcribed over 900 ads, but they have a newspaper with numerous ads that are awaiting transcription. If you're interested, you can contact them at the link below.

Sign Up to Transcribe
Please fill out the information below to become a transcriber. When you do, you will receive an email from MyWiki. Follow the link to change your password. While you are on MyWiki, select "preferences" and "verify my password." This will insure your transcriptions save correctly. Then return to Last Seen, sign into "Scripto," go to Browse Items, and begin transcribing!!

http://informationwanted.org/sign-up

How wonderful! I just signed up. I hope they can put me to work - I would love to help in anyway!

Thanks so so much for posting this! Just beautiful.
 
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