Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Pam McClanahan and I'm the project manager for the historic Maryland newspapers project. Thank you for joining us today for our symposium on researching African Americans and newspapers.
This event is hosted by the University of Maryland libraries historic Maryland newspapers project and sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities
I'm going to go over some logistics for our zoom webinar and some background information for today's event.
We are in the zoom webinar platform today, and you only be able to hear from the hosts and panelists, attendees can participate through the q and a feature and the chat.
If you'd like to use closed captioning, you can turn on that feature at the bottom of your zoom window with the CC live transcript icon.
There will be a q&a session after each guest speaker, and we ask that you type your questions into the q&a feature at the bottom of your zoom window.
We will have staff monitoring q&a and chat.
If you have comments throughout the event, please type those into chat.
If you have questions though please make sure those go into the q and a so we can share those with our speakers, you have any technical difficulties comment in the chat and Antonia will be responding to your issues as our tech support today.
We're going to go over a quick introduction to those involved with our project.
The historic Maryland newspapers project is the Maryland State awardee of the national digital newspaper program which is a partnership between Library of Congress, and National Endowment for the Humanities.
Our project co directors are Doug McElrath our Director of special collections and University Archives, and Robin Pike, head of digital conversion and media reformatting, you'll be hearing from Doug and Robin later today.
As I mentioned, I'm the project manager and I'm the digital projects librarian here at the university libraries.
We have three part time staff on the project as well. And our student assistant Alexis Woolford is here today and will be helping us monitor the chat and q&a.
I'd also like to mention our newspaper advisory board. This is a group of archivists librarians historians and educators from throughout the state who provide invaluable support to the project.
Many of our advisory board members are here today, and you'll be hearing from a couple of them during our event.
Here's our symposium agenda. First we'll have a welcome from Doug McElrath our project co director.
After that, I'm going to give a short background on the historic Maryland newspapers project.
Then we're going to have our first guest speaker, Maya Davis, the director of the Riversdale House Museum.
Then we'll take a 10 minute break after that.
And next we'll have our second guest speaker Timothy Pinnick an avid historian and lecture on African American genealogy.
There will be a q&a session after each speaker. As I mentioned, please choose the q and a icon at the bottom of your zoom window to put your questions in the q&a box.
If time allows, we will have an additional discussion session with our speakers before concluding our event.
We also will have some interactive poll questions throughout our afternoon, and an opportunity to share about your personal experience conducting research in the chat, you'll hear more about this later.
Now I'm going to turn it over to our co director Doug McElrath, who will be our moderator for this symposium.
Thank you, Pam.
Before we get underway, I would like to invite all of us to reflect on this acknowledgement. As I read it at the University of Maryland libraries, we believe it is important to create dialogue to honor those who have been historically and systematically
disenfranchised.
We acknowledge the truth, that is often buried. We are on the ancestral lands of the piscataway people who were among the first in the Western Hemisphere.
We are on indigenous land that was stolen from the piscataway peoples by European colonists.
We pay respect to piscataway elders and ancestors.
Please take a moment to consider the many legacies of violence displacement migration and settlement that bring us together here today.
Thank you.
It is with great pleasure that I welcome this very large turnout of people.
For today's symposium on researching African Americans and newspapers.
On behalf of the University of Maryland libraries and our sponsors at the National Endowment for the Humanities. We are thrilled to see this level of interest in a topic of vital importance.
As you've already heard I'm Doug McElrath the director of special collections and University Archives here at the University of Maryland.
And one of the principal investigators for our historic Maryland newspaper project since its inception in 2012.
I have to say that one of the favorite parts of my job is when I get to spend time with old newspapers.
And while I agree with a somewhat cliched statement that newspapers are the first draft of history. I have discovered through my own research that historic newspapers are a critical resource for uncovering previously ignored or forgotten voices.
I'm also old enough to remember the long hours spent in front of a microphone machine searching for elusive information in newspapers, until my eyes became too blurred to continue.
But now with the availability of Chronicling America and other online newspaper resources. I think we're entering a golden age of newspaper research.
The organizers of today's symposium hope that by demonstrating some ways that historic newspapers have advanced our understanding of the past, and in particular how they've helped restore African American narratives that once were assumed to be untellable.
We will encourage others to add newspapers to their toolbox of resources for understanding. Similarly, and for undertaking similarly innovative research projects.
We also hope that an outcome of today's symposium will be your assistance, as our project seeks to identify and preserve titles, documenting the African American experience in Maryland.
Maryland is a small state that produced giants like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass who himself was a newspaper man.
But as you will hear today, the state also has countless examples of less celebrated black lives that mattered. That deserves our attention.
And with that, I'm going to turn it back over to Pam McClanahan who will tell you just a little bit more about our enterprise to make to preserve and make accessible newspapers, with our state and national partners.
Thanks Doug.
The Historic Maryland newspapers project or HMNP for short.
As I said is the Maryland state partner of the National digital newspaper program, NDNP came out of the US newspaper program, the US and he was also a partnership between National Endowment for the Humanities and Library of Congress, and happened between
1982 and 2001.
The goals of this program were to locate catalog and microfilm newspapers published in the US, the USNP established microfilm standards that are still in use today, and the US newspaper directory which is a rich resource now available online. NDNP began in 2005 and used to digitize select newspapers that were microfilmed during the USNP and make them freely accessible in an online database Chronicling America.
Each state has one awardee of the program that receives a two year grant coordinate newspaper title submissions for the state, and submit approximately 100,000 digitized newspaper pages to be included on the Chronicling America website managed by library
of Congress, states can receive multiple awards, as selected by NEH that can submit additional newspaper pages.
Each day partner contributes their digitized Content Library of Congress where it is added to Chronicling America.
There are over 18 million newspaper pages on Chronicling America, and more continue to be added these pages come from nearly every state, two territories and Washington DC.
Newspapers ranging date from 1777 to 1963 with the bulk of the content between 1836 and 1922, University of Maryland libraries working closely with other stakeholders across the state and our volunteer advisory board, have been participating in the national
digital newspaper program since 2012.
HMNP has contributed nearly 400,000 newspaper pages to Chronicling America. We're working on an additional 100,000 pages issues range in date from 1842 to 1963.
We have Maryland newspaper titles from the different geographic regions of the state, including papers of record for the state. We also have titles representing diverse communities, including political minority groups labor groups women and immigrant
communities.
Looking to the future, we are working on another grant application focused on content representing African Americans in Maryland.
We look forward to hearing from the research community during today's event. You can find out more about HMNP on our website.
In addition to Chronicling America you can also find historic Maryland newspapers at many repositories throughout the state and commercial databases.
Now our project co director Robin Pike is going to launch our first poll for the day.
So in this poll. We're going to do a quick one minute poll, just to get a sense of what your background is just to see who all is here today.
Please respond in the poll.
about 10 seconds left if you want to get your answer in seems like we have a pretty good representation from the library and archives and museums, with also a lot of general researchers.
Okay, so here's who is here today.
Thanks.
Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Maria Day, and I am the director of special collections and conservation at the Maryland State Archives, but I'm also a board member of the historic Maryland newspaper project advisory board, and I'm delighted to be
here this afternoon to introduce my friend and colleague Maya Davis, Maya Davis is the director of the Riversdale House Museum, the former 19th century plantation home of George and Rosalie Calvert, as well as generations of enslaved families held in
bondage.
Prior to her arrival at Riversdale Maya was a research archivist and legislative liaison at the Maryland State Archives, where I had the pleasure of working with her.
She at the archives consulted on statewide and actually even international I should remind her projects.
That document and interpret and preserve African American History and Culture and facilitated the discussions on state legislation and contemplated legislation.
Maya currently serves as Commissioner on the Maryland lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture.
She is also a board member of the Prince George's County Historical Society. A native Washingtonian Maya is a graduate of Howard and George Washington Universities where she obtained degrees in history, and museum studies.
Please welcome Maya Davis.
Thank you, Maria for that wonderful introduction, sometimes when people introduce me I feel like I'm more impressed by their introduction than what I think of myself, But I just want to say thank you so much to the University of Maryland and this group for
for having me here at the UMD Symposium on researching African Americans and newspapers. It is my honor to be here to speak about a project that I worked on for so many years, that has helped me to understand how to put in context, what is placed before
me and newspapers.
What information people want to glean from them and how to improve on making that information accessible.
I can remember being a small girl growing up in Washington DC and watching my father read the Washington Post newspaper every single day, and I could not understand why it seemed like the most boring thing that anyone on earth could do from my seven or
eight year old perspective.
So imagine my surprise when in elementary school we were instructed to complete assignments on current events where we needed to clip newspaper articles write about them, and later present them in front of the class.
This would then be followed by years in college, where I would be majoring in history at Howard University, those professors instilled the importance of utilizing the university's Moorland-Springarn research center, and among the records and manuscripts that
needed to utilize, you guessed it, newspapers, however, it was during that time when my experience shifted, because I was introduced to collections of newspapers published by African Americans and had a better grasp of what information could be gleaned
about the black experience. And where would later find out there my own great great grandfather Lionel Valdemore Roberts of the Virgin Islands, was the editor of the emancipator newspaper, a local newspaper on the island of St.
Thomas, all of those experiences prepared me for the work that I would undertake at the Maryland State Archives in the study of the legacy of slavery and Maryland program.
Next slide please.
Before I get into the weeds of the project, I first want to share how the work started, and the legacy of slavery program. It really all started with a recommendation from a volunteer the Maryland State Archives.
The late Jerry Hanson.
I can recall the first time I met Jerry, who served as a member of the Advisory Committee for the legacy of slavery in Maryland program.
It was my first year the archives, and the very first meeting that our team was having with the program's advisory group which included top scholars and authorities on the African American experience in Maryland, including Dr.
Ira Berlin, Dr. Cheryl LaRoche, Dr. Clara Small, genealogist Lewis Digs, and law professor Larry Gibson and among others.
It was extremely nerve wracking.
But Jerry walked in, and ran over and gave me the biggest hug and said it's been so long. Where have you been, and that may sound like just such a sharp embracing moment.
But I had never met Jerry before then, and I could not and would not tell him that I did not know him, but I opted instead to go along with whoever he thought I was in that moment and from that moment, we developed a close working relationship.
And from that point when we opened up that meeting and began the usual round robin of introductions. Jerry introduced himself, most humbly as a hobby genealogist.
When he finished the director of that program, Christopher Haley actually stopped him and made sure to recognize and acknowledge that it was Jerry Hanson and award winning genealogist and author who in the midst of his own research pulled him aside and
said, you also look into your newspapers and do something with all of those advertisements for runaway slaves
that recommendation, moved up the chain archives leadership and events we led to the authorization of the commission to coordinate the study commemoration and impact of slavers history and legacy and Maryland formed in March 2001 funds were targeted by
the Commission to identify and maintain library and archival resources about the history and legacy of slavery.
Producer guides, and maintain online databases of relevant holdings, especially those not appropriately catalog and documented historical sites in Maryland concerned with the history and legacy of slavery were identified by the Commission which monitored their
preservation and development.
Next slide please.
So, I say that to say, you know, Jerry Hanson has passed on, but I do dedicate this presentation to him because if it had not been for that recommendation.
The legacy of slavery department may have never been an actual entity I may not have had the opportunity to work with my wonderful colleagues at the Maryland State Archives.
So I'm really grateful for the recommendation of someone who used the records for their own personal research and then thought enough that we should share that and make that accessible to our public.
So now I want to talk to you about the legacy of slavery in Maryland program.
The Maryland State Archives legacy of slavery in Maryland project began its work 20 years ago, transcribing digitizing and interpreting newspapers related to Maryland's enslaved population, which has since expanded to include government records such
as certificates of freedom manumissions bills of sale and chattel records.
The grant funded project started through the work with interns that transitioned into full time staffing, the need for continuous grants became necessary to fund this project because we wanted to make sure that we covered the entire state and it began with
the counties of Prince George's and Frederick, and then grew on to include Eastern Shore counties of Dorchester Talbot Caroline Kent. And then we also did one in Ann Arundel County, and eventually moved that on to Charles and Calvert County.
And so I know that work is still very much unfinished, but you know it's a grant funding to actually achieve the work that was done in the study of the legacy of slavery program in terms of making newspapers accessible so that we can build on the narrative
of what we knew about Maryland's enslaved and free black community, the individuals that you see before you are well known individuals. The Reverend James Pennington Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass Henry Hyland Garnett, and there's two people that
I included on this front frontispiece because we know so much more now than we knew them when we first started, James Collins Johnson who was enslaved America and escaped to Princeton University, where he lived out the rest of his years and became a
key figure in a lawsuit for his own freedom. And Douglass's own son in law Nathan Spragg, who actually was enslaved at the North Hampton plantation and Prince George's County, which is the Prince George's parks site today in the division of the natural
historical Resources Division.
And it's so wonderful that we've been able to now take this from paper to imagery and we are discovering more and it shows and highlights the importance and the value of digitization and transcription and accessibility.
Next slide please.
To begin this work, the project received a National Park Service networks of freedom grant, which provided paid internship opportunities for students to participate in the research for a project called beneath the underground, the flights of freedom
and antebellum communities and Maryland 1830 to 1860.
And those years were marked because, as it had been explained to us as we partner with different organizations, 1830 t0 1860 were a key set of us that define the Underground Railroad.
And that's when you see the heightened increase of individuals who are actually escaping.
We have many incidents of escapes that took place prior to these years and we definitely hope to look at those years at a later date. But in the meantime, our goal was to focus on the years 1830 to 1860, where we knew that we will find a lot of advertisements
that could support the work that we were trying to do.
For years the national and international focus of what we call the Underground Railroad was interpreted as an organized network of white abolitionists who put their lives on the line to save helpless enslaved people.
That same narrative, which attempted to celebrate the black contribution isolated and iconisized size two figures, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman to represent a larger network individuals who overtime became nameless and faceless.
And that's not to say that we should not celebrate Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman we definitely should, but we need to make sure that we recognize the voices of those many thousands who came before them during the time that they would have escaped
and long after them.
As a result, the focus of the project was to uncover the stories of unknown heroes of slave flight and resistance.
Newspapers are some of the most useful tools to document flight during the antebellum era, subscribers or, as we probably would know them slaveholders or their agents, or managers or overseers or a family member, usually placed either run away advertisements,
or committal notices and utilized periodicals as a public forum to appeal for the return of their property.
The newspapers mind for this project ranged from 1730s to 1864. And I know that earlier I said that we had a focuse on 1830 to 1860 and that early iteration, but know that in between that time volunteers like Jerry Hanson and Burn and Roberts, were actually
doing their own set of culling for information and actually sharing with us and we've worked with different organizations who have also shared different newspaper transcriptions and digitization that we were able to embed and incorporate into the work
that we do.
And that came from numerous counties throughout the state, as well as Washington DC and Virginia.
Each advertisement is unique and can include important information, such as the names of slaves and their owners.
The data flight state and county of flight reward for apprehension physical attributes of the fugitive and likely destinations, utilizing these papers within the archives collections, we identified three categories of advertisements that we could collect
and curate into a database runaway advertisements commitment notices and domestic trafficking advertisements.
In our earlier days, we utilized a pencil and a printed paper spreadsheet to record the information from the advertisements, to be later typed into an internal database.
Then to capture the images, we had to print images from microfilm to be scanned uploaded and numbered, or in the event that there were only original bound newspaper volumes, we used handheld cameras to take pictures of the ads, which were in large bound
volumes they were so heavy I'll never forget the newspapers were in various stages of conservation needs some were brutal to the touch and we had to shelve the idea of even trying to transcribe and digitize the information that came out of it.
And thank heavens for technology growing and expanding, because the technology came a long way for the archives and over the years we were able to invest in a large scanner that was equipped to handle fragile materials and to digitize the large bound
volumes.
Next slide.
And just to share with our audience, you know, and give you a sense of how big those volumes are on this image of myself and Chris Haley. This is a staged photo because of course we wouldn't be handling that with our bare hands and not use gloves.
But that's how big the volumes were so if you can imagine, hours of grueling work photographing and trying to be careful with these newspapers so that we can make them accessible and this is we did not have anything beyond a small flat bed scanner, or
one that fed into so you know it took a lot of work to get that done with limited resources, and the picture on the left is a row in the stacks it's one of my favorite images of the archives because it's very indicative of the ways in which record material
arrives at the archives I don't think people realize, you know, it's not because things are sitting on the archive shelves that they are receiving this wear and tear over time No a lot of times, this material may have come from someone's home and attic
or may have come from sitting on a shelf somewhere else and and temperature conditions like it's just a variety of ways that they show up and that you can see that some of the volumes are perfectly bound and kept in good condition, while others are really
have lost their binding and have become vulnerable over the years. Next slide please.
So now I just want to look at our runway advertisements and talk to you about the three different types of advertisements, and I'm going to start with a quote by Frederick Douglass from his book, my bondage my freedom.
And he said, all the great Turnpikes leading northward were beset with kidnappers a class of men who watched the newspapers for advertisements for runaway slaves, making their living by the accursed reward of slave hunting.
So as I said, we started this work by looking at the runaway slave advertisers because we really were more interested in the groups of individuals who before they even were able to interact with an abolitionist or someone who was assisting them along
their way on their journey to escape. It took self determination to decide that you were going to be vulnerable enough to strike out on your own, and put your life in jeopardy and the life of someone else possibly in terms of seeking liberty.
So slave owners face runway advertisers and local newspapers in an attempt to retrieve their escaped slaves.
By the early 1830s Not only did private citizens of Maryland, capturing runaways receive $30 per head, but law enforcement officers received additional monies for exhibiting energy in this aspect of their duties.
As time passed those rewards continued to be at large. So a lot of times when you see these runaway advertisements and you're seeing that there's a reward for $100 or $200 or $500.
That money is going to pay various people it's not just one person that's going to seek out and receive this $100 or more that's why you see there's many hands involved that receive and benefit from the path of, you know, receiving a reward for capturing
an enslaved person, and the advertisements. They range from singular incidents with one individual or a small group of individuals to mask flight incidents, such as the Pearl incident that occurred and Washington DC, the image you see before you are Emily and
Mary Edmondson who were actually from Montgomery County, Maryland, but escaped on the schooner Pearl in 1848. And what I always think of I'm when I was working with the City Museum in Washington DC.
This was a story that I was very interested in is that April 15 1848 was the day they escaped and oddly years later, you know, DCMS patient would take place on April 16 and just how close those dates are, you know, not in terms of years but just being
in the same month and being in the same vein, I just think that's really significant and something that we should think about how that are happening.
But these stories, you know, Mary and Emily Edmonson they are more prominent now but when I first looked at them years ago, probably in the 90s, it, it has grown tremendously the information that we've been able to glean and they were one of 77, that's,
I believe the largest non violent
act of escape by a group.
They were, unfortunately, caught at point Lookout, and these two girls were actually sent to the slave jail in Alexandria, to be sold to New Orleans and Frederick Douglass and if anyone here knows me many people know me from this call.
You know how I feel about Frederick Douglass. And so anytime that I do a presentation I bring some aspect of him into what I do, but recognizing that we definitely have to do our due diligence to bring other people to the forefront but he actually worked
to help secure the freedom of both Mary and Emily Edmondson from that slave pen and I think that's something to be honored and recognized, but the runaway slave advertisements, they, they are so descriptive in their great genealogical and research tool because
they really lay out the information about the individuals, which was not the intention of the people who were placing the ad their goal was just to actually retrieve them so they gave as much information and working at the archives, the one thing that I
noticed as a trend is that when it came to people escaping.
Or if they were going to become a part of the free black community in Maryland. There was further documentation. Than, if they had just continue to exist on someone's plantation home.
When you look at tax records of individuals who continue to remain on people's properties, you may just get a Susan or Joe or Sarah Mary and Mariah. But the moment they run away, you know they have a surname.
They have an age that you can identify, they have family members that they are likely to run to also have names. You learn a lot about this community from these records and it's really helpful.
And it also helps to understand that there were two networks of the UTRR. There was the northern Underground Railroad, which Intel the concerted organized integrated system of communication transportation and finance aimed at assistant fugitive slaves.
Upon their arrival in free space to avoid recapture and return to slave states, Southern underground railroad carry for the more basic pensioner resistance to slavery as exhibited by the enslaved themselves and others on the plantation and the slave states.
This involved running away in a wide range of ways, helping others to run or keep running, and these two networks can be seen as cooperative.
And based on our research, we know that this flight impacted laws, not just nationally through the fugitive slave acts, but also in Maryland directly where they passed several laws related to runaways in and around the state.
We were able to then take the advertisements that we received the runaway slave ads and compare them with our Baltimore County Jail dockets, as well as the runaway docket and beginning of 1831, a separate Docket, it was created for runaways committed to
the county jail, and in the following year 1832 the county jail records were moved to the jurisdiction of Baltimore City. So from 1832 to 1864 runaways were recorded and separate doc is of the Baltimore City jail, from all other crime related
incidents. Next slide please.
And I don't know I'm hoping that you can see this clear I hope it's big enough for people to see but I just wanted to kind of show an example of how we could see change over time from collecting this information.
And one thing I should say is that if there's an incident and it happened in, let's say the pearl, 18 15
April the 15th 1848, then they're going to be talking about this for the next couple of days so what we would do is we take a photograph of the first image and we'd see how often it was going to run newspaper editors and subscribers will also put notes
at the bottom of these runaway advertisements to tell you how often these advertisements were going to be displayed in their newspaper, but I'm using this example of Clem Hill who was also enslaved at the North Hampton plantation.
The first one on the left, Clem Hill escapes with a guy named William Whittington. And that is an 1815 when he escapes and the reward is $200 which likely means that they're offering $100 for each of those two gentlemen.
And we know that Clem is not successful. How do we know this because he appears again, the second runaway advertisement.
And this is a separate incident where he's just run away and may of 1817 with his wife Sophie he's running away with his wife instead of his friend William Whittington.
And he may have actually been successful on this escape with his wife, because in this third incident. This is 1819 and Governor Samuel sprigg is actually still looking for Clem and Sophie that's two years later, that he's not been able to have them back
on his property and enslaved and held in bondage.
So just to kind of show you the types of information that can be gleaned, you know in a newspaper you can sit there all day and it may take forever but once you compile this information and it's in a database is super helpful because you can now, Target, who you're looking for, where you're looking for them, who they ran with, who they ran from, all this information is super helpful. And I'll let you go to the next slide.
And so some of those stories we were able to look at that information. We had a digitized copy of William stills Underground Railroad, where he documented the lives of enslaved individuals that passed through his office in Philadelphia, that he assisted
on their way to freedom. One of those figures being Ann Maria Weems also from Montgomery county where we have a $500 reward for her which says a lot.
Women of her age large weren't typically valued that high at $500. And, you know, makes me really curious why her owner Charles price would place the $500 reward, but he did but seeing stories like that from William still where you get the written perspective
someone who came face to face with them and then being able to go back to our database and show that this information was documented in the newspapers has been very helpful. Next slide.
And the same can be said for James Pennington who also had a runaway slave advertisement that we were able to digitize and put in our database, a $200 reward for his return and at that time, whigh he writes about in his own, and slave narrative that he
called James Pembroke, and that his owner was Frisby Tillman. And for those of you unfamiliar with James Pennington he is the minister who performed the wedding ceremony for newly free Frederick Douglass and his freed wife, Anna Marie Douglas, and you
can go forward.
Can you go back and seems like it jumped a little bit
sorry that it seems like it mixed up with some slides but I'll go for it anyway. Um.
One issue that we did face, and our immediate collection is that for prominent figures like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. The documents were removed from newspapers, meaning that they were taken at some point by some individual who recognized
their value, we are able to see evidence of square cutouts of whole missing pages that were sliced from the bound volumes repeated searches and newspapers of the archives turned up missing pages for those events that took place in 1838 and 1849.
This is similar in many ways to what we saw in newspapers that covered the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
Many of those newspapers, we see that those editions have been sliced and people have taken that information and have it, the advertisement for Harriet Tubman the one that we've been able to locate does sit in private hands and it's good that that person
that individual was able to actually share that and make that accessible, so that we can see what that information pertained I'm so sorry that this I got mixed around because I wanted to stress the importance of, you know, we know a lot about Harriet
Tubman and there's a lot in her narrative that we can learn from but her brothers also escaped with her and in that runway advertisement that I was wanting to show.
It's.
Oh, thank you.
It's the slide.
Her brother Ben Ross which when we worked on the Harriet Tubman State Park, we were able to uncover a picture of Ben Ross and tie it into this advertisement that shows the escape of Harriet who was then known as Araminta Ross, or Minty as she was called
by her slaveholders. Next slide.
Commitment notices.
So commitment notices, were actually notices that were placed by county sheriffs, and it was recorded after the arrest of a fugitive slave.
It helps to capture the individuals who were successful. And that also impacted free blacks who were also arrested under the guise with the sheriff who wanted to accuse them of being fugitives from the law.
And so we have a lot of these and the commitment notices also act in a capacity that they can actually help us to document the successes and I don't want even use the word failures.
But, you know, it shows that this story of flight is not one of success, as we all wish that it could have been. But these individuals as you saw at Clinton Hill, this was a concerted effort, that took place more than once sometimes more than twice.
And it provides a lot of information, some of the commitment notices will say that this individual has stated that they're owned by a particular person, but other ones will say this person has indicated that he is indeed free.
Next slide please.
And the last set of ads that we looked at were domestic trafficking ads that were advertisements for companies by Franklin arms bill or slave traders like Austin Woolfolk and James Purvis, where they advertised and requested that they were looking for large
amounts of enslaved individuals. And what we learned through that process when we were actually going through is that we discovered that there were people who were having estate sales and liquidating off a deceased persons assets and sometimes listed
at the bottom or somewhere in the middle, maybe even at the top, that there will be names of individuals who had actually been bought and sold it just became harder to track those incidents because it just really was hard to see it you know you're looking
at a newspaper and I can tell you is really blinding after a while to look at bound volumes with font. That seems like 2.5 is really small writing that you know when you digitize that you can blow it up and make it, you know, the size that you're interested in. But when you're looking at it there's a lot that can be missed And you know working with different iterations of professionals volunteers and interns
There's definitely room for error and, you know, I would love to go back and see like if there's the possibility that we missed anything because there's so many notifications and some newspapers were better than others about having advertisers advertisements
pertaining to enslaved individuals in one particular section of their paper, but there were other newspapers that had them all over the place. So it buried in different incidents but it helped us to kind of understand who the individuals who are, how we
go back to the original government records and look at the populations like who's disappearing from the tax records and just looking at how that shifted with the population was, when I think about the eastern shore of the work that we did on the eastern
shore we were surprised to find that the population of free blacks to slave was about 50/50 during this time period, but we were able to then take what we knew from these domestic trafficking as and go to our land records and just look at repeated incidents
of people like Austin Woolfolk the Campbell brothers going over to the eastern shore and purchasing enslaved individuals that will be later sold into the southern markets.
please. Next slide.
So, from that work we then we're taking this and building the stories of the voiceless into biographical case studies.
And from the individuals you see these are well known individuals I just like I think they make good picture pieces for my slides but these people as well known as they are Samuel wringle Ward Henry Highland Garnett and Josiah Henson all started out as unknown
people who made a daring attempt to secure their freedom in Garnett and Ward actually were only small children and we often leave small children out of the story and we kind of put the onus on the adults and give them credit and they do deserve credit but
small children were very much a part of this and I can only imagine what that must have been like, how scary that must have been how tiring. It has to have been in all the journeys they vary so much we saw different modes of transportation some enslaved individuals
had actually taken, you know, a horse with them has stolen a horse or had believed to take in a cart or something like that. And some people simply left on their feet.
And so, you know, it's so varied but we wanted to take this information and not just have people search for it but like build out stories about who these individuals were.
And we had three categories that we define which included fugitives accomplices and slaveholders, and I say this to because that's how we started out but really, as we partner further with the National Park Service known for freedom, they stress the
importance of language and how we identify people, and we now use the term freedom seekers to describe those people who have traditionally been called fugitives from the law for escaping.
And for the purposes of the beneath the Underground Railroad project domestic traffic is defined as the Interstate and intrastate trade of enslaved men, women, women and children, and are similar to run away and committal notices.
So next slide please.
And throughout this work we were able to then uncover the story of people who would have been considered accomplices to flight. And I intentionally purposely, show the images of Anna Marie Douglas who was very integral in helping her husband Frederick
Douglass escape when he was Frederick Bailey from freedom and the Reverend will Bishop, Alexander Walker raymond who was actually a free black man born in Caroline County, Maryland, and rose to be the Bishop of the AME church who was also integral
and assisting people with flight as written, and some of the experience slave narratives that we've uncovered and William still who while not a Marylander he was the child of Marylanders who had escaped from Maryland and settled in New Jersey and he
later opened up his office in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but this network of people had an established system that they trusted and opened up to include people that, quite honestly you don't know if they can be trusted.
A newly escaped slave you don't know at what moment they're going to become so overwhelmed by all that it takes to secure your freedom and wants to go back, or if they're going to be fearful of the laws and what that punishment may look like later on.
Next slide please.
And then the third category was the slaveholders and I love to use this image of the governors because oftentimes when we were doing this work people thought of you know just your run of the mill everyday farmer in Maryland, but the run of the mill slave
holder ranges from poor white farmers, all the way up to governors and the aristocracy of the state. All three of these governors, Edward Lloyd, Charles originally of Hampton was an open site opener in Towson and Samuel spray in North Hampton, which I shared
the runway at of his Negro man Clemens you saw Frederick Douglass's son in law, Nathan spray who was Nathan Hawkins when he was in slave who also would have escaped from North Hampton, they all were people who placed run away ads or had advertisements
placed on their behalf.
So, just trying to break that up and show a different perspective of how that looks. Next slide please.
So in terms of the voice of the newspapers.
The Maryland newspapers were largely written by white slave holding individuals, including Ann Catherine green who, after her husband passed away he was the proprietor of the Maryland Gazette, which was one of the largest newspapers in the colonies and
actually boasted a lot of runaway advertisements from individuals who were seeking to escape. And then the Baltimore Sun, which was then founded in 1837 and by far more than any other newspapers that we looked at.
No matter how Southern sympathizer the counties were these two newspapers contain more runaway slave advertisements than any of the other newspapers that we played that we've gotten a lot out of the other newspapers, especially papers like the port tobacco
times and the Marlboro Gazette, and we even had in our collection of the Washington National Intelligencer, which, if you're living in counties like Prince George's and Montgomery you actually do have to place your advertisements in Washington DC because it
boasts its own free black population, where people can hide in plain sight and live amongst their own family, community, without being detected as a runaway.
Next slide please.
And so, as I spoke to you that was the voice of the newspapers from our collection. But I want to visit another quote from Frederick Douglass where he said, but how is it with the American slaves were making the assemble.
We're making the assemble. Where's the conciliation Hall, where are his newspapers.
And that has been the challenge of doing the study of the legacy of slavery work is that much of the information that we're gleaning is information that has been written from the perspective of white slave holding citizens who not only want the return
of their own enslaved people they want to make sure that they support their fellow citizens and retaining the system of enslavement in Maryland and so they're also feeding into this system, which is why you see multiple ads and it really at times was
very hard to just hone in on those ads because we would also see other stories of incidents of enslaved individuals that were in the midst
of freedom suits. who were actually in the midst of freedom suits, there's obituaries.
There's just like a multitude We even saw like Harriet Tubman like on the same page where people were being offered a award. She was on the same page as having been a speaker in Boston, and we were really excited when we found out because that's the
first Maryland newspaper we found anything about Harriet Tubman, and I'm guessing that's because whoever took the advertisements from when she ran away at 1849 didn't think that there would be a small coverage of her in 1860 and speaking, so you know we
really fortunate to find that and so there's all these different things. JOHN Bain a Prince George's County, when his enslaved woman Judah actually poisoned his children that was written about and it's just like you can't get distracted by all these other
topics that are very important and integral but you know you're working with a grant you're working within the confines of that grant. So, you know, it just really
was something that we have to target and focused and build out the story that we wanted to tell related to the stories of flight. But over time, you know, Frederick Douglass, many are aware founded his own newspaper, The first being the North Star, which
he published December 3 1847, and he is not definitely not the first African American newspaper publisher, but I use him as a figure of Maryland to talk about how the stories of Maryland were then incorporated it into these black newspapers, and it's just
amazing how that then grew into our own Baltimore Afro American founded by John H Murphy in 1892, who himself was a former enslaved individual.
And, and looking at those additions of the afro and finding the Murphy family tree in those additions and also finding stories of former enslaved individuals at their death row obituaries when their children were married or just simply to tell the story of
story of what they're enslaved experience was the afro at a later date acts as a resource and counters, the way in which people are depicted in the white newspapers that we had become so dependent upon.
And I have to give kudos to the afro for always having amazing archivists my former colleague john Gartrel and started with us at the legacy of slavery actually transitioned to become the Archivist of the afro and now the director of the john Hope Franklin
Center at Duke University, followed Ja-Zette Marshburn and now Savannah Wood who actually helped me as I was collecting private personal information about my own ancestral line Valdemore Roberts, the Baltimore Afro, in many ways, it was local, but
it was also very national I mean my great grandfather as I shared earlier was from the Virgin Islands and so to find him, and a picture which I only had one picture before finding that one is just really a great resource to have So I really encourage
you know as we look at our traditional resources that we consider moving into some of the other untapped papers like the Baltimore Afro or even the Chicago Defender, and the Indianapolis recorder you can also find Maryland based information.
And these are some of the resources that I used today that Enoch Pratt library if you get one of their e cards you can actually view the afro and the Baltimore Sun free of charge and using Chronicling America, and go digital DC which I use through my library
card Covid has really proved that our library has gone all out and made things more accessible for us and I'm really excited to see where we go from there.
Next slide.
And thank you, I can be reached at the following email if anyone wants to chat after this and find out more information about the study of the legacy of slavery, or the work that we're doing at the Riversdale House Museum.
I really hope that people come out to our museum where they can learn more about our own history and connection with newspapers, whether that be through runaway advertisements, or to celebrate the birth and death of members of our very own from our family.
Thank you.
Thank you, Maya. We actually have a little bit of time for some questions, and a few have come come through the q and a box. If any of you out there have additional questions, please continue to use the q and a function and we'll ask as many
of them as we can.
So here's one that I think there might be a quick answer for Maya. Is there a list of all the enslaved individuals escaped on the pearl and could that be shared.
Oh, you're muted, maya.
Thank you Doug/ yes there is, um, well one I'll say that a book was actually published on the prowl by Mary K Ricks.
And that's one resource but there is a list I have the newspaper article that I showed and it may have been too far out in terms of zoom. It does name everyone who was actually captured on the pearl, and I'm happy to share that.
Okay, thank you. Um, here's a, here's a question. kind of related to the legacy of slavery project what techniques or approaches were used to mine the data collected in the project.
Well, you know like, where we were at the beginning is so different in terms of where we were later on but I will say that we leaned in knowing that Prince George's County for one had the largest enslaved population so we figured that you know starting
with a county like Prince George's that it likely would have a lot of movement around the flight to freedom.
And so that was one way that we looked at it as looking at the populations and whether you would have something there. And so we did Prince George's County and then we looked at the eastern shore because we knew people like Douglas Tubman Pennington Garnett
Samuel Ward they all were from the eastern shore and so he wants to know what made the eastern shore tick like viral all these key figures coming from the eastern shore and of course, a lot of that has to do with proximity like Maryland is a border
state and so understanding where we are and like how close we are to places and hotbeds of activity related to the Underground Railroad like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and a lot of places like what we discovered we really underestimated the state of New
Jersey and all the places that were established there. And because you know a lot of times when you hear the story of the Underground Railroad people focus so much on Canada those this Promised Land.
And we had a small project that looked at the war of 1812 it showed us that it definitely was not and looked at runaway slaves that left during that period but we did the commemoration of the War of 1812 but I think all in all, is that you just have to
know your location. and know what your resources are Maryland State Archives has lots we have a huge collection of newspapers, but we don't have all newspapers, understanding that newspapers is different to government records are something that are donated
is not a law that they'd be transferred to the mental state archives as a part of his permanent collection.
So speaking of Canada we actually have a question that relates to that.
one of our participants is working on an underground railroad project from Baltimore to Nova Scotia in 1836, and they're asking if we can make any suggestions for pre 1940 sources to explore.
Let me tell you so the Nova Scotia archives has done an amazing job of digitizing their records. And that's how we were able to continue the work of the legacy of slavery.
When we started we really wanted to use this as an opportunity to not only make this information accessible but to highlight, you know what our collections were and brag about our collections of the Maryland state archives.
But in order to tell the full story of escape, you have to then reach out to other repositories so that you can see how this life evolves over time so the Nova Scotia archives, is amazing.
It's an amazing resource and I wish I knew the link off hand but I believe they changed the website name so I would just google Afro Nova Scotia, and something should come up a link should definitely come up and they have a lot of digital materials and
we were able to find communities that have been established by testing slaves that escaped during the war of 1812 from places like Saderly Dardanelles chance.
Mount Calvart and Pearl we are just able to make so many connections and leaps and just get excited about the fact that these people were successful in their escape and, you know, even beyond the war of 1812.
When people like Josiah Henson and Harriet Tubman.
Go and settle in Canada for periods of time but understanding that not everyone goes to Canada stays there like the Underground Railroad is very migratory and people you know don't stay in the same place all the time because of the dangers associated
with people like slave catchers and traders and things like that.
So we have a question about the image of Miss Weems.
Yeah, I believe, I believe that was from William still's underground railroad correct my question was, did it appear in a newspaper. Do you know if it was a photograph or a drawing.
You know, I've never seen the image in a newspaper myself the only place that I had ever seen it before was in William stills Underground Railroad. And I do believe that from the looks of it, it looks like an etching but I don't know if that was just specific
for his book or taken from. Yeah, there we are. And did she make it to freedom. No, we don't have any documentation of her return, and she's not the only member of her family that escaped from Charles price, a gentleman a scholar out of Canada Brian price
or Prince actually wrote a book about the Weems family, I don't remember the name is escaping me right now but that could be a potential resource to find out further information.
So we have a question. Were there any underground black newspapers, would they have any ancestry benefits.
Underground black newspaper there would have been black newspaper I don't know that they would have been secret now I will say that black newspapers were definitely under attack.
We know that Ida B. Wells when she did publishing and she wrote about lynchings and things like that.
You know those newspapers were attacked by local white citizens who were opposed to the messages that they were sending in regards to making recommendations for newspapers I would because I don't get to work with them often enough except for what I'm
doing special projects I would prefer to compile a list and then follow up.
Next question asks, Are you able to tell what the general timeframe was between when a runaway occurred and when an ad was published, the slaves may have made pretty good headway depending on the publication date.
Yes. So, usually in the ad
The subscriber would say what date the slave ran away. And we can see from the date of publication, when it was placed so oftentimes, it was seemed to be like maybe a day sometimes the same day you got there early enough I'm guessing you're ad made it
into the newspaper but um, I would say one or two days. Typically, is how it happened unless you're looking at something that's like more of a weekly publication like if it's something that's daily, you can kind of be more consistent about it but if you're
looking at a weekly newspaper then it'll be a lot harder, and like, sometimes, you know, we thought that people would advertise locally. They really reached farther and some other states like Pennsylvania and Delaware to place the advertisements.
Almost as if they knew that's where the individual's headed.
So our next question is a little bit from a different time period but let's see, let's see how you can handle this one.
What are the legacies of slavery Maryland is mass incarceration, it can sometimes be challenging to locate records on, Maryland, Maryland's prisoners in prison system in the 20th century, particularly the early years of the state penal farm in the women's
prison in the late 1930s early 40s, what are your suggestions for researchers investigating this subject.
investigating the subject in the early 20th century. Yeah, prison.
particularly prisoners, I think it's the probably contact amounts that are passed because they do help people with expungements To this day, and just understanding whether records exist in the county courthouse still or with the agency that created the record
or if it's actually been you know transferred to the State Archives I think that's been a big issue. We definitely would see that with vital records that a lot of people weren't really aware that you know there's restrictions on birth certificates or
death certificates and with that restriction some things have not been transferred so I think it's very much the same thing for jail records, a lot of that ends up being like court case files and things like that, especially in the 20th century but i
i think that um yeah I just would imagine that that person should probably consult the guide to government records because it really is a case by case basis or something like, Jail record is a state or county record a newspaper can come and we can
like a whole set together. When you're dealing with county transfers. It's not like we had like this one shelf of stacks like we're all but the prisoner records are but like just getting to know and understand your county and looking at the indexes and
the guide to government records, so you can get an understanding of what records are there and what records survive.
So here's, here's one for you that I think you might be able to answer.
Can you discuss any relationship and connection between Frederick Douglass and the Plummer family of Riversdale Frederick Douglass and the Plummer family, Frederick Douglass p, Ashley new Henry Fenton Plummer, who was the son of Adam Francis Plummer
Francis Palmer was enslaved at our site, and his wife and children were actually enslaved at the three sisters plantation and Lanham Maryland, and were later sold to another slave holder.
Gilbert levithan Thompson and they lived at Meridian Hill and they also live at in Howard County.
I've not focused our research on Douglass.
At this time, we're still trying to uncover a lot of the information related to our fuller enslaved population but I will say that Douglass did figure into a relationship with Henry Plummer he also his son in law, Nathan Sprague and his siblings also
knew the Plummer and Arnel Saunders family. Well, as well so it wasn't just Douglass, his family members like his daughter Rosetta della sprague and others actually were in connection with our Plummer descendants and ancestors related to Adam Francis Plummer
but if you look at Maryland records, it really, as you said earlier Doug it's a very small state and many pathways cross and collide, as it relates to enslaved individuals and their interactions,
here's, here's a intriguing question were newspapers legally required to run runaway slave ads, could they refuse.
Um, I you know I don't even recall we had a whole listing of laws that we recorded that were in connection to runaway slave ads and runaway slaves, I should say, and I recall that there was one that spoke to the responsibility of newspapers and actually
citizens, being responsible for putting this information to sheriffs were responsible for getting the information into the newspaper. I don't remember the specific law but I think that is something that I'll be able to share it's on the archives of Maryland
online. Okay. Robin are we about at time.
We are. okay. So there are some additional questions we will try to make note of but we're also going to invite everybody to.
If you didn't get your question answered to email it to us, we'll be providing the email address at the end of the symposium.
So for right now I think we've got a 10 minute break. And during the break, if you are so inclined.
We have a couple of questions for you that we invite you to use the chat to respond to.
Thank you.
Thank you Maya.
We still have about five minutes left for our break but I just wanted to remind everyone that you can answer a couple of questions in our chat we'd love to hear your feedback, what resources are most and least helpful in your research and What challenges
do you come across accessing resources in your research. You can respond to those and chat.
And I did want to just follow up and let everyone know we will be sharing a recording of today's symposium with everyone who registered and will also be including a list of all of these resources that are being shared by the speakers and everyone involved
today.
We'll be back in just a few more minutes.
Hello again and welcome back.
We're going to be opening poll number two.
So, what are your research interests that you might feel that you've done in the past that you hope to do more of in the future.
Thank you all for submitting your poll will leave this open for a minute as well.
And if you don't see your interest in the chat or in the poll please feel free to post something in the chat.
Okay, so it looks like the majority of your, you are here because you have an interest in African American community history and genealogy, as well as specific topics to African American and newspapers in general so it's great to see such a large response
and so many.
Varied research interests.
Now, for the next speaker.
So Mary Mannix will be introducing our next speaker. She is an archivist and librarian and is the Maryland Room manager at the Frederick County Public Libraries.
She is also a valued member of the advisory board for the historic Maryland newspaper project. Take it away, Mary.
Thank you, Robin. I'm delighted to be here today to present information about Tim Pinnick our next speaker, Tim has played a very important role in my development as a genealogy library.
Timothy, Timothy N Pinnick is a book author article writer and national speaker with more than 35 years overall research experience, including all the major US repositories.
And if you ever spend any quality time with Tim he's also been to every conceivable minor repository he can find pretty much if Tim sees a library in archives he stops and goes in, no matter what his wife who may be in the car with him thinks his
publications include the groundbreaking book, finding and using African American newspapers which is accessible at many public libraries and academic libraries in our area, including a circulating copy at Frederick County public libraries in 2019, Tim
was the coordinator and facilitator of a landmark workshop course at IGHR, for those of you who aren't genealogy oriented that's the Institute of genealogy and historical research that takes place in Georgia, entitled building an African American research
toolbox. I had the incredible Good luck to be in that class and it was a personal and professional life changing week for me.
Tim is a lover of history has presented papers at four large history conferences, the most recent at the 2019 Association for the state of African American life and history conference in Charleston, South Carolina, and if you don't get enough of Tim today
and who could ever get enough of Tim he will be presenting virtually through Allen County Public Library this Saturday, and I give you Tim Pinnick.
Oops.
Okay. Sorry, I think I was muted. Here we go. Sound check everybody can hear me now right. We can hear you Tim. All right.
Okay, let's get started I am very very excited to be here with so many of you. This symposium, when it was presented to me. At first I said no because I was really really busy and I'm working on a major project now, but one of my call them my teacher's
pet. Mary who was in my toolbox course asked me begged me to please do this and when I looked at what they were putting together. I'm really really glad she, she prompted me to do this because it looks like a really worthwhile effort here and I'm pleased
to be a part of it.
You're gonna be hearing me say next quite a bit because I have a lot of slides. So next slide please.
So for African American genealogical research. Newspapers are essential.
And that's both African American newspapers and mainstream newspapers. Next please.
For the mainstream papers, they often provide the details and clues that are not found in black papers, all papers are not created equal and you're going to find some things of interest, and of value in those papers that are not in the black papers, they're
going to be full of these really amazing obituaries for their respected black citizens. And that's an interesting term respected and there's a, there's, there's a lot that can be discussed as far as what that represents, but in the southern mind you know
usually their respected citizens are the ones that African American citizens are the ones that went off as their their body servants to the, to the Civil War, the ones that didn't move very far from the plantation or their former place where they were
enslaved.
The ones that pretty much kept the same and adhered to the same mores that were in place prior to emancipation so so if they didn't rock the boat and stayed in that community for a long time they became respected citizens and you really find some very rich
obituaries on them.
This information will vary widely in their coverage of African American activities, you don't find a ton of information but you will find as we go through this talk will will we'll divide it up a little bit and talk a little more about that.
As far as where you're going to find more coverage where you find less.
And they may carry news of African Americans in segregated columns. This is one of the few times in my life where I can say segregation is good, Because in the area of historical research, and particularly for African American those segregated records
can really really be helpful in that respect and so a lot of these white papers for the number of reasons that we don't have time to go into would would put the news of African Americans in a column and call it are colored folks
colored news wide variety of topics or titles.
And then they complement the news in black newspapers, and they really need to be used with those black newspapers in tandem and you need to use them both.
Next slide.
For African American papers would surprise me by the way, as far as a researcher that that African Americans doing genealogical research, or people doing genealogical research on African Americans.
They weren't using these papers very much and it was stunning to me when I realized that they weren't. And that's what really brought about the writing of the book, but African American newspapers, they often reveal new information.
Some that cannot be found elsewhere. So you're going to find these, these these nuggets of information that's going to really knock your socks off it and you're not going to find it anywhere else and it's really no rhyme or reason, sometimes in why that
information is, is there.
They can be a source to confirm information found elsewhere and we all know as season to season researchers how important that is to be able to when you find you have a piece of information and you're really wanting to to are needing to find, you know a corroborating piece of information to confirm that particular date or that particular event or whatever and so it's wonderful
When you find those things in these papers in they're there covers the lives of African Americans in a myriad of ways, and unlike no other no other source.
Trust me when I tell you, these African American newspapers are absolutely fantastic. In, and you just will not find the coverage of African Americans, so richly in any other source.
And then they identify and document community activities and institutions, which were the heartbeat of the African American communities both large and small.
Next slide.
There is, and I don't know how many of you are aware but I assume a lot of you will be within the sound of my voice but there is a 21st century bear barrier to newspaper research success, and I attributed to something called information overload.
Right. You can easily find if you want you want to find out if you want to learn about African American newspapers or newspaper research in general, there's lectures out there.
Many for you to find that talk about it in some course being better than others but there's dozens of them out there.
There's online databases and again there's a plethora of these databases, both free and paid from local libraries and societies all the way up to the commercial giants there's just lots and lots of them.
And the key thing is, in another thing that could be very confusing in this process is that the sand is always shifting.
Next slide.
In by shifting sand, saying, meaning like usually additions right additions additions to these various databases because these organizations, particularly on the commercial side, you know if they want to keep up as a paying customer for a subscription
if you're paying a annual subscription, you know, you don't want to you want to see them adding new pages, adding new, new stuff and so you always see I'm saying no 10,000 new pages added this week or whatever, because they're always doing that so what
is the new pages, what are the new, you know communities that are being presented at these different various sites is hard to keep track of that. And so you have the shifting sand. in the case of Proquest which is really one of the more prolific huge
institutions out there for information processing. They recently came up with their Canadian newspaper collection which is wonderful.
But you can you can trust that in the next year, 18 months or whatever they will have another one out there, because they're constantly improving and adding content, and that justifies their high price tag, even though some of their libraries within the
sound of my voice might say, I don't know if anything is up to justify their price tag is quite, quite steep.
Next slide.
And so again, here's just another example another huge institutional Corporation in the business of newspapers readex, and they came, I came across this series there's 17 of them so they're breaking things in and breaking them apart into different topics
as you can see here, so they have early American newspapers series and so if you're looking, you know, urban and immigrant communities and so on and so forth.
Again, another effort to kind of repackage or reshape things and to sell these products to to universities and educational institutions that can afford them.
So the sand again it's always shifting and you really it's very very difficult, nearly impossible to keep up with all of this. Next slide.
So there is a solution though, This is the solution that I recommend this is solution I use. And I find it very effective. And it's a dual solution, and it is the ancestor hunt website, in conjunction with Chronicling America which you guys have already
heard a bit about and probably a lot of you use that one more than the ancestor hunt, but we'll talk about both of them briefly. Next slide.
The ancestor hunt. This is where I go when I'm trying to find papers that have been digitized online material. So, using the ancestor hunt is very easy for me to find what's available for I'm looking for a certain paper certain location it's organized you
can find out where they're available by state and by counties, which is terrific.
One of the biggest benefits, and I know you guys have got to be like me when you get so frustrated when you're trying to find a paper for Indianapolis, Indiana, or, or coffee Ville Kansas or something like that.
And you, you think you find something, and you, you go to it and then you find this behind a wall, a paywall because it's part of a subscription based site so now it's going to be very difficult to try to access that depending on where it is.
And so that can be really really frustrating, but with the ancestor hunt, you get a breakdown so when you find certain papers that you're interested in, you can find out right away, whether that paper is free, or if it behind a paywall.
And then what can does also Ken mark who runs and has created ancestor hunters.
He really has put together a lot of nice how tos, to make you a better and more effective user of newspaper sites. I was amazed, quite frankly, when, when I saw the number of things he was doing.
And we all kind of scratched the surface right what like what our iPhones or whatever we kind of know how to make a phone call, maybe, you know, get into our contacts and whatever.
And if we're not one of these, you know 20 somethings or whatever.
We don't know how to do a whole lot with it. And the same thing with somebody databases, you know, we know how to use Chronicling America, you know in a rudimentary fashion.
But, Ken has put together some, some videos, and how tos on using Chronicling America, you know as the example, it really allows you to get so much more out of it and become much more efficient so it's really really an outstanding site.
Next place.
However, I have to put this here because it's, it's a new phenomenon is something that has come on, as of late, I've actually talked to Ken about this.
But recently he started accepting ads.
And, and they're all over the place. And so it can be a bit challenging now to navigate the site whereas before it was this extremely easy, but now you have to be careful on what you're clicking on you know because half the time it might be an ad or whatever.
And so all I can say is, is absolutely positively worthwhile to to use this site, and what you're just going to have to do is it's going to be a steeper learning curve, you don't have to kind of go out to it.
In, and by practice in paying close attention, you can really figure out exactly where you need to go.
And then you can avoid a lot of the ads and things like that and you can be very very effective but. So don't be shocked when you first go out there and you see these ads popping up all over the place.
Ken's like anybody else, people got me he's he's he's got he's got bills he's got things he has to do and he's done a tremendous amount of work here, putting together what I guess I would call an aggregator where all of these different websites that you
probably have heard of newspaper websites elephant hind or pro quest that I just mentioned genealogy bank newspapers.com etc. They're all there. And he's getting pulled out this this information for you, even by ethnicity, African American sections and
whatever, to where you can go through and find if there are newspapers, on a particular location of interest, and you can find that information out he's very very thorough any updates, all the time so it's an absolute fabulous website for information.
Next slide.
The other one which you've talked about that you've heard talked about a little bit here is Chronicling America, absolutely fantastic the site the website, it's on the Library of Congress is a massive newspaper title directory.
And what you get there and what I go there for primarily is to find out what's available in print or microfilm so what newspaper papers are out there that I can access for my areas of interest that are in print or microfilm.
And then I can learn where they're available so once I find them, I can then find out what repositories across the country have them and then I can go about trying to, to bring them to me, primarily through interlibrary loan or as Mary stated, if I'm
on the road, I'd say just covid's just got to be over so I can get back on the road and visit all these libraries that I love and cherish and the libraries and librarians within them.
I love you folks too.
And then there's a bonus, and I call it a bonus because again, primarily, I'm coming here for the print and microfilm information trying to find things, but the project that that Maryland is doing now, in other places across the, the 50 states.
Through these NEH grants and things. They're just every year and you heard in the beginning, you know, hundred thousand pages that are being added by certain states.
And so there is now a very substantial collection of digitize papers and it's growing and growing and growing so it's really becoming quite, quite impressive.
So that's a bonus that you get to by coming to Chronicling America. Next please.
But let's talk about the two VIP I call them very important points, and that is offline they related to offline collections, which are so important to the process of a newspaper research, you got to get it in your head.
Please, if you don't hear anything else here this, the majority of papers are not on the web. Let me back that up, they are not on the web. And they won't be there for a long time, so so if you are just going to be a internet warrior.
You're going to be missing the majority of the information is out there and you're not going to have a whole lot of success you will have some limited success but nowhere near the amount of success that you could have in newspaper research, if you took
it offline. Okay. And the other thing, like with Chronicling America specifically that's where you have to print microfilm repository there it;s massive is when you think of world cat is like a world cat, but there's just like work there's just like world
cat there's not every library is not participating it's not mandatory they don't do it for whatever reason, and there's many reasons I'm sure out there, but many many libraries are not represented in Chronicling America so the one down the street, you know,
or the one around the corner, or more importantly the one in your ancestral homeland is not there so you when you looking for a paper that particular area and it doesn't pop up like oh it's not there.
Don't say that don't believe that it's not there, you have to do further investigation offline to see if you can find those. I live. I was born and raised in a little tiny community called Lockport and the biggest city next to me.
We spent a lot of time is Joliet about, about 60 miles or so from Chicago Southwestern Chicago. Well, I don't believe Joliet, which has a really really nice collection of newspapers, including the Herald news which I really do a lot of research in I
do not believe that they're represented chronically American if they are somebody please share that information with me and I'll have another celebratory glass of wine tonight to go with my first glass, but that would be great to hear, but as of right
now, again, it's probably one of those one of those islands out there.
One of those silos where where is hard to get that information unless you're actually paying a visit there or giving them request to look up certain things.
Okay. Next slide.
So we're going to go through now.
Some tips and strategies and resources I've been doing this for a long time my book came out I believe in 2008.
And so that's been quite a while over a decade, and I was doing a lot of research before that so I've seen a lot of things, you know, with one song I've been everywhere man so I've seen and done a lot so we're going to go through 12.
In the limited amount of time we have here today.
Some tips some strategies and some resources that I can share with you. Next slide please.
So when researching an ancestors community do searches on events such as an emancipation day Memorial Day, which was first Decoration Day, etc. So, when you were expecting when looking at these African American newspapers look on these events, particularly
those ones that are Afro centric like emancipation day. Next slide.
Here's a wonderful picture one of my favorite pictures that I found came across my many years of researching this is Richmond in 1905, and it depicts the emancipation day.
And you can see they were well attended events in cities and communities, large and small, African Americans turned out especially right after freedom came in celebration of, of that particular event.
Next slide.
And here's a newspaper representation from Butler Pennsylvania, and these are legion they're all over the internet. they're all over the newspapers.
When you're doing searches you're going to find lots of information on communities all across the country, that were celebrating emancipation day.
And this one happens to be from the Pittsburgh courier 1912. And, again, they're, they're cyclical cyclical things. But the other thing to remember in your research is that emancipation dates were separate or were celebrated at different times because
they were celebrating different things for example the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. Or when it took effect in different things so and even one I think is the Haitian Revolution, I think it's the market of emancipation for African American,
or for Africans. And so, you will find that out to as far as when you dig deeper as far as when they're taking place they won't all necessarily be in January some won't be in August and other time times to, which is really neat.
Okay. Next slide please.
And so this is the book I came across again I'm a bookseller now.
And I just so enjoy I enjoy sharing information with people go on to different events as a book vendor, and I get the the byproduct is I get to learn about all these fantastic books and so this is one of sharing called O freedom, African American emancipation
celebrations is a great book. For information on the celebrations the history of them and again that's where you can kind of parse out the different dates that the emancipation celebrations were held in Wiggins was did a great job he was
he was, he was, he was destined to write this book because he then went to all across the country. And he charts, where he was going as he was going to get information from various communities about emancipation day activities and events and things so
it's a really really good book.
Next slide.
strategy two take time to search the anniversary dates of weddings and deaths. Okay, very important.
Next slide.
Here's an example of that. This is Chicago defender a sick list from the Chicago Defender in May of 1916. And so we're going to pull a little tiny sliver out of there.
And it says Mrs. Susan Churchill 3725 Forest Avenue is seriously ill. Okay, that's their misspelling not mine.
but she was sick she was very sick.
So, I think you're okay you're very sick, then I probably find the death notice on this person so again I'm researching and writing my book. I'm going down all manner of rabbit holes you guys know exactly what I'm talking about.
Don't play it off like you don't go down rabbit holes. But anyway, so I'm interested now in Susan Churchill and and but I couldn't find a death notice, and so I was, I was little, okay this is gonna be a little harder than I thought.
But. Next slide please.
But because I knew about anniversaries and that type of thing and memorials being put in papers, very frequently by African Americans in these black papers.
I just started looking, I put her name and I started looking for the anniversary dates and seeing if I could find something on her, and boom, I sure enough, it didn't take me very long to where I found in Chicago Defender of defender, excuse me.
In may 28 20 1921 showing there and I found that you can see memorials for several years on her and probably there was more. Right. And then what I learned is that she had actually died the day after that notice of her illness was made in that particular
paper. Next slide.
Three research strategy three is finding a small article on an ancestor in a newspaper outside of where they live, should prompt you to take a close look at the newspaper in the town, in which they were resident in search of a larger article.
Okay, this is very critical. Is that how I learned Okay, next slide.
And here's the illustration of that. So on the left you have the Pittsburgh courier from Christmas Day actually 1948 and this is the article I found, and I was like wow, this is really interesting you Henry Jackson in Georgetown South Carolina.
He was a post office employee that had just this great efficiency rating. And then it gave a little bit of genealogical information on his son and then where he was a church member which is always important trying to get that information out, discover it.
And so this was a great little article in the Chicago sorry or in the Pittsburgh career.
But I said, here's a rabbit hole for me I'm like okay I'm, I'm interested in this guy now, and I'm thinking this got to be more so what did I do, I went to the Georgetown paper.
And sure enough, here's the article on the right that had come out several weeks before the courier one, and as you can see this happens all the time, these these major newspapers will clip these articles cut them down to fit into their newspaper, they
don't necessarily want the huge article but it's an article it's in human interest story so they just you know again they just modify it for their paper and then run it that way.
But when you go to the source pretty much of where they got that information, you will find much much more and look at Henry Duffy Jackson, I mean it's just amazing the information they give their much more detailed, of course, about his son, and other
things about him and his accomplishments. Next slide please.
Four utilize all your research options and I talked about this at the top of the session here, but it's so important that I'm beating you over the head with it.
You need to identify and search both mainstream and African American newspapers and search those newspapers both online and you have to get offline.
Don't reject the paper just because a derogatory language. I can't tell you the number of times I was in genealogy conferences mingling with people, and we're talking about subjects of the subject African American newspapers and they say oh, white newspapers
and they start you know oh they're terrible and you know all the talk about is stealing chickens and in the heinous acts and whatever all the criminality and whatever and that's all they do in there I can't stand it, you know, or whatever but you know
what, you have to develop a thick skin.
That's what I tell them you gotta develop, you want to find your ancestors are not that really is the central question. And if so, you got it you got to develop that thick skin, you got to go look at those newspapers,
because it's going to be things in those papers, especially for the local paper where your ancestors were that's going to have stuff a value to you and your research, and the people that are writing.
Remember, the people that are authoring these papers or that the editors or whatever these papers, those were the former enslavers.
So, you know, there's going to be stuff in there and you're going to be interested in him anyway as far as trying to find information and finding your people so you just have to do it.
Next slide.
So here's something that's it's a newspaper annual directory I use these all the time, and I suggest you do as well. This one's from 1921, and you can find copies of these directories imprint at libraries University Libraries primarily.
You can also find them online like this one is online, and I believe you can I'm pretty sure you can you can download. They're huge. But you can download them and have them right there in your office with you.
Next slide.
And so here's the entry for Augusta, Georgia.
And one thing that people again when you, you've got to go back into the timeframe and look at the research based on what the norms and what was going on there, you know not looking at it from a 21st century 20th century lens, but from the lens of when
these people are living. And so here you see these entries.
Wonderful entries for each city information in general when you look there for Augusta gives you a really really good information when you're trying to write that social history and putting your ancestors in context.
But what I want to point out here is the political leanings because that's important. So when you look here you see the political leanings of this particular paper.
And again, if you're following your history and you understand your history.
What you understand here is that for a democratic paper in 1921, that is not a favorable paper for African Americans, that's the opposite. So, African Americans right if you if you think about it and you hear it every so often they say the party of Lincoln
right the party of Abraham Lincoln, which was the Republican Party. So most African Americans were had their allegiance to the Republican Party. So this particular paper went as you're assessing its value, you could note that this is probably not going
to be a paper that has a whole lot of information favorable to African Americans in there in that particular paper but it will have some information, right, and like I told you earlier, you have to look at these papers.
So next slide.
And when you do that you will be rewarded, such as an article like this. This is an amazing article that was in the Augusta Chronicle. In May of 1911.
And so it talks about this highest price slave in the south, his name was Adam Scott and he was a Miller, and so it goes all through about the fact that how much he how much somebody paid for him, they bought him.
And that was a particularly high price it looks like off to the left, it might even be right there 30 over $3700 they paid back. Back then, in the middle of the 1800s for him.
And then you get in you get all kinds of information about them in here I pulled up some of that, and I'll read it says since the building of the mill down to its present time, they had been one of the direct line of Adam Scott in the mill, their employees
speak of them in the highest terms, and they are competent careful man who understand their trade. Thus why their value is so high in a highly sought and so you don't think that there's going to be a wonderful obituary for him when he dies, you can
take it to the bank, there is going to be one.
Next slide.
Number five major black newspapers, as they expanded created local and or regional editions of their papers, some of them survived offline and microfilm on microfilm or in print and local repositories.
This is a little known fact, and again I discovered this as I was writing the newspaper in Connecticut that got stumped a couple times I couldn't find an article and I didn't know why and what it happens I switched from a national paper to a local paper of the same newspaper, but they had different editions, so I didn't know that.
And so, this is something that black newspapers did. It was part of their their their business model business strategy, they could not break the same as white papers because they did not have the same revenue stream, they didn't get the advertising from Sears and Robuck or the different
major companies out there that will buy an advertising they were not buying it in black newspapers, they were just expecting us to just walk through their doors and buy their products.
And so, black newspapers understood that what their model was, and they, they were more efficient in getting subscribers when they follow this model of having local and regional and national additions of their papers.
Next slide.
So this is just a wonderful a picture's worth 1000 words, I was so incredibly excited when I found this and I found it in HBCU when I'm pretty positive I was looking at some images the other day and I think it was at North Carolina Central University,
which has a really rich collection of newspapers on microfilm, and oh my goodness here's a paper that a lot of you being in the Maryland area I know we're spread out all over the place, but Marylanders would be interested in because it's the Norfolk journal
and guide.
Okay. and it is a paper from Norfolk, and it was a national paper that rose to national prominence and so you see the national edition, but then they also had the Home Edition so if you had people that were that you found it migrated or born and raised
and lived planted roots in Norfolk then you'd be looking at the one off the to right the Home Edition for a lot of those little stories and pieces of information about a house may be catching on fire on a certain street or whatever, you'd be looking there.
And then for those of you up in Maryland down there in North Carolina in DC, you're going to be looking for that inner the interstate edition, and if you can find this going to be wonderful but it's going to have information that's not in the other to
necessarily. And so you're going to find things especially. Oh, I just love you I can talk all day. I just love migrations. And so migrations again when you talk about migration to people, the number of people that move from North Carolina the northern
part of North Carolina into Norfolk and back and forth, there's so many relations there. And so the interstate want to be really helpful. Again, for giving you those clues and following those relatives that those ties from the people that were in Norfolk
that still had those relationships in those other communities across the borders. Next slide please.
So bear with me this is one of my longest one.
Many, many cities have nicknamed This is a cool one though many cities have nicknames some have several and a number of African American newspapers made significant use of them, the more common ones from 100 years ago, may not be immediately recognizable
to many, like, Philadelphia, as the Quaker city or Pittsburgh, as the smoky city, but Georgetta Merrick Campbell's book extent collections of early black newspapers, a research guide to the black press 1880s to 1915 with an index to the Boston Guardian
from 1902 to 1904 contains a substantial list, particularly for East Coast cities. Oh, this was a learning experience. This is really cool. Next slide please.
So this is the book. And then here's just a little snippet of the place names for social columns, and you would just never figured it out I mean you never would figure it out right.
And so, I mean you look at some of these and then I'm pointing at the one for for Syracuse New York I mean really, salt sea echoes, you would know that I mean most people would not know that.
But when you're searching digitally. These African American newspapers that are coming online, and you're looking for Syracuse, and all you're putting into Syracuse, you're missing sea salt echoes because a lot of the social columns will be.
As you can see, will be under the heading of that. So, this was really really a wonderful discovery and I just, I just was sitting there stunned and it was just great discovery and thank you to Georgetta, for writing and publishing this book.
Next slide.
Number seven, answers in African American newspapers, this is an article I wrote for family tree magazine in May of 2011.
It outlines 11 benefits derived from using the black press as part of your research plan. Next slide.
This is what the magazine looks like that particular issue.
This is the beginning of the article off to the right. I think it's very well done I think it really gives you some insight into some of the things you may not be thinking about as far as when you use African American newspapers so you need to try to
get a hold of this.
I can tell you, and I'll tell the symposium folks that they can put my because I don't believe my email is going to be anywhere on my in my slides so you can put my email that we've been using into the chat or share with them, however you'd like to, so
that if they want to contact me if they're looking to try to get a copy this article, just, you can send me an email and I'll try to get get one to you.
Next slide.
Number eight, one of the few, and I mean few extensive indexes for African Americans, newspapers, is, is courtesy of James DT Abajian. He is the author of blacks and selected newspapers sentences and other sources, and index to names and subjects.
This is a three volume printed set, which is which he extracted the names of from 43 newspapers, I mean how meticulous I mean to do that so it's painstaking work, many of them dating back to the 19th century, short time later, he produced the two volume
supplement, which appears both in print and on microfilm this dude was God, heavenly sent. Next slide.
So this is what the three volumes look like they're huge they're oversized volumes.
And what's neat about this and what I discovered recently is that you.
Well, what I discovered is when I was searching for these, these. This particular book. For some reason, and I got hit on a certain library or whatever, I realized that they actually weren't because typically you find these books in there in the reference
area so you can check them out. But these were actually in the general stacks and I couldn't believe it. And so, which means is that technically they're available for interlibrary loan.
And so to be able to get your hand on these is pretty remarkable not having to go to a library to access them. And I think they're, they're fairly rare.
So again, you're not going to find them everywhere. So check that out and see if you can find them somewhere or put that in the library loan request and you might get lucky, the place that actually hasn't been the general stacks even though they're big
books, hopefully that won't impact your ability or willingness to send them to you through the interlibrary loan process. Next slide.
This is an example of me finding something really really unique that I that I didn't expect, courtesy of James DT Abajian.
And so, here was I was working on a research project that had to do with the Grand Army of the Republic I've done it put together a presentation, and then I got really really interested in post 50 which was a huge post a segregated all black post
in Chicago. And so I was researching some of those guys and one of the guys called look at this unique name was Enos bond. And so I was researching him.
And so what I did again as a research strategy and as a newspaper research plan. I started whenever I was going out to where I was doing research about an hour away from my house and then at Northern Illinois University Library, where they had the the
books, the indexes, I would go in and I would have a list that was part of my strategy every time I went there, I would have a list of a dozen names or so that I would run through the index, just look and see if they were there.
In most cases, they were not there, but in a number of cases I struck gold, as in the case of this one, were Enos bond I had done a lot of research on him, and I wasn't finding a whole lot of rich information on him boom I find this in the appeal, and
it's talking about our great detective and it's a wonderful account of him I didn't know he was a cop I you know he was a law enforcement officer, and yet he was a, not only an officer but he was a detective and he was actually obviously a pretty good
one, and you got this huge write up at how you get crack this case. And it was just some rich information again that that unique information that newspapers will give you, but you just have to know how to find this information and you have to have a plan.
Next slide.
Number nine, learn to spot cyclical activities within the community that your ancestors may be associated with, so you can mine the information on a regular basis, the election of officers and churches is an example of fraternal societies, local group club
meetings, out of town conferences.
Some of these occasions that if you narrow it down, they can be easily search, an offline newspapers. So now that you got that cyclical timing established, you can then go offline and keep looking for them and pulling that information out on that particular
topic.
Next slide.
So here's an example of that.
Like the in churches, it seemed like I was finding out that at the beginning of the year, is when they were recording a lot of their, their elections and stuff Sunday school superintendents and deacons and this all kinds of things.
And so here to test that I just put in here in genealogy bank. I use the word Sunday elect for Sunday elections to see what I would get. And then I just selected the first of the year when this was normally taking place.
And these newspapers are typically weekly. And so I said okay January February 1924 let's see what I'll get. And so I put that in I put search now and next slide.
And I got several hits this one from Salina, Kansas, involving think John's Baptist Church. Next slide.
And as I blow this up, you can see the first full paragraph there.
It says the following deacons were installed in this service. So as you can see they do that on a again on a regular basis and I could go through now every January, and pull out who the people were that were elected to various positions.
In this particular church, if this was a church where my ancestors were.
Next slide please.
10, a lecture that has been performed dozens of times by me, called finding and using African American newspapers.
When I was doing it once at the Kalamazoo library in 2012, they asked me to have it recorded. I said, Okay. Yeah, go ahead. And then they and they said they were going to upload it to YouTube, which they did so it's been out there now for know have its
a 10th anniversary coming up here soon. Next year, but the talk that I give is course based on the book I wrote, and it covers a substantial amount of what's in the book of course not everything in 50 minutes, 70 minutes I think that the video is.
And along with some, some other things I had learned after the book it went to print, to press. So it's a good resource. Next slide please.
So it's pretty easy to find it.
You just go and Google, you know some keywords you know Pinnick Kalamazoo, you know, black newspapers or whatever you put them in a string you throw them into Google.
And sure enough, my smiling face will pop up. And you can, and I'll entertain you for about 70 minutes.
Next slide.
Number 11, Marlene Bransom.
I tell you what, I could recommend her for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, freedom when it comes to genealogy and her contributions and some of you I hope if you know, Marlene Bransom.
Give her, give us a shot mentioned it right now so yes I know that one, because she is outstanding. She's a longtime member of the afro American Historical and Geological Society she's a saint.
Wonderful. And she is was the is, I think he may still be doing it no one her there's a breath in her body she's probably still doing this, but she's publishing this amazing series of books, it's called early African American deaths in the Pittsburgh
Courier. There's 15 volumes that I've noticed that are available through Closson press Marlene is transcribing these deaths from the news from the paper, and due to the nationwide circulation of a paper like the Pittsburgh courier.
They cover majority of date. They can cover majority of states and dozens of cities.
Next slide please.
So here's just an example from the Closson Press.
I think they're great for public libraries, you guys out there right that use these libraries that use these public libraries, I don't care. This is a great
tool to have, whether at the local library or at the, at the university level, they're outstanding.
And so you need to advocate those out there genealogist and others that are going in these libraries, you can always, you know, lots of them ask you what do you like to see here, or whatever you know what what what should we purchase within you know newest
budget the next year's budget or whatever. Put this on the list, get these books if you can.
As you can see here, you know, book six, you know, thousand plus deaths. And you can see the richness and the vastness of it, it goes, it goes radiating far beyond Pittsburgh and all these other communities, all these think of all these little towns for
these people migrated from in this particular instance 30 states were mentioned lots of those states lots of those communities are in the south the rural south where there is no newspaper.
And so, these are so so valuable for us in our genealogical research. Next slide please.
Okay, this is our last strategy as part of their business model, African American newspapers published a staggering number of social or slash community columns.
I've documented quite a few of them when I realized they're rich value, and a good number of them had been compiled and can be found online. Next slide.
I ended up before I moved on to other things. I ended up with a list of over 5000 of these social columns from nearly every state in the union. I've compiled them and they'll be part of the package that you guys get the resources from, from the symposium
organizers, I submitted it to them and it'll be part of what you get. so you'll get that information. Next slide please.
Okay, I guess you can probably figure out that when it comes to conducting effective newspaper research, I believe firmly that the priority focus should be determining which newspapers have those social community columns for your cities and towns of interest,
they're just chock full of information that will blow your mind if you've never seen these things.
Next slide.
The community social column, I get I'm going to argue that it's probably the most valuable aspect of black newspaper research available to you.
They allow us to reach into the other community into other communities beyond the town where that newspaper is being published. Okay. Next slide please.
There's my daddy. Wow. Who would have known that I would have found in the Chicago Defender, February, 24 1923, an entry that marked my father coming into the world, Braidwood Illinois tiny coal mining towns 60 70 miles south of Chicago, little bump in
the road. Who would think it'd be in Chicago Defender, but that's the way, African American newspapers were organized and once you understand that you can find your father.
Right. And so here I am looking at Herbert, I just sat back in my, in my chair that day at the library when I found this and it's just like really really neat and I'm so happy that I was able to share this with my dad, he was still alive when I had made
this discovery so here's Herbert Pinnick's wife. I love that is the proud mother of a baby boy, and that baby boy was Richard Frank Pinnick. And he was born February, 12 1923.
He's a rock star. Next slide please.
And so here, if I'm going to be doing community social column work, I would start out, or one of the, one of the areas where you're going to reap the most benefit are the large
national level.
Black newspapers and no in a lot in several of those papers have been digitized by pro quest, as part of their Historical Newspapers black newspaper collection.
And so here it is you can look at it and see what's available.
The Michigan Chronicle was just added I think within the last year or so. And this is an absolutely tremendous resource it's hard to get to find, because it's so expensive is one of the reasons, but lots of university libraries expecting these academic
libraries, where a lot of writing and publishing and stuff going on.
You will be able to find them. I heard, and I believe is the case.
It's very fortunate for you guys so you guys are very fortunate because you had a library of congress. I mean when I say you guys again I'm talking about the ones that are listening that are actually from the Maryland area, and again that the Library
of Congress, I think has, has this whole collection and and you can get your library of congress card or whatever and you can you can access these other people, not so lucky.
And so you have to really search all over the place. Let me say one last thing before I move on from this is that lots of libraries because they cannot afford the whole package.
Proquest allows them to to buy sections of it or buy particular papers so you may find in a particular library, it might have three of them that they feel are are germane to to their particular area what they're doing that they're focused their mission.
And so you may find not all of them at a particular place that's close to you, you may just find, you know, a couple of like Baltimore Afro American and Norfolk journalists in guide or to Pittsburgh Courier and in Philadelphia Tribune, maybe if you're
up in an area in Pennsylvania. Next slide please.
So here's an example of, of, to try to get, I always say people you tell people to do stuff all the time.
But then if you show them and make a case for it, they're more likely to do what you suggest they do. So in this particular example, what you see is a little mini case study that I did.
And it was a on a community in Champaign, Illinois, in Champaign County. And so, I was doing an early 20th century research project there. And so, let's see how it progressed.
Next slide.
What I learned is that the African American population there in Champaign was was pretty, pretty robust and you can see over the period of three decades or four decades and how you look at this, their population steadily grew from 404 in 1900 to over 1500
in 1930 so there are a lot of people to be observed and talked about in information shared about this particular community. Next slide please.
So I began with a search of Chronicling America to see what newspapers might exist for Champaign. So I did a search there. Next slide.
And the search was for Illinois.
Initially, and just be something else there might have messed up.
Let's see Let's go next slide and see what it gives us. Oh, there it is. Okay.
And what I discovered is that there were 154 black newspaper that have been found in catalog for Illinois on zeroing in, right, zeroing in. So next slide please.
So then I did a search, and I narrowed it down to Champaign County, Illinois. Next please.
And there I found there were black nine black newspaper that had been found in catalog, but none of them were in the time period I was looking for and researching, which was the early 1900s so I kind of struck out there as well.
Next slide.
And, like I've been telling you, you can't just you know be online, you have to go offline and so I'm looking all over the place and so I'm using other resources three of them which I consider I nicknamed them the big three when you're trying to find offline
material. And so I looked in there. Nothing. Next slide.
However, I was able to find a treasure trove of information on Champaign through social column searches. And so when I started using newspapers effectively and looking for the social where Champaign was mentioned or where Champaign correspondents had
sent their information to these other newspapers. As you can see there, there are a number of papers that had information for that time period, including that last one is the Indianapolis Freeman, often called the Freeman, for short, wonderful newspaper,
a fantastic newspaper, with lots of social columns and as you can see, there, there, they go outside of the, the state of Indianapolis, or state of Indiana, when it comes to their coverage and so you can see they had information on Champaign too.
And actually Champaign when you look at it geographically was not very far from not reasonably far from Indianapolis is the street on i believe i 70 70 or 74 74 straight shot from one to the other, from Illinois to Indiana.
Next slide please.
And so this is just an example of what they look like.
This was Chicago Whip 1921 for Champaign and lots of times to pay attention to who the correspondent is Mr Breedlove there was the correspondent for quite a while in that community which means he knew some people and he was interested in that.
And it's a telling thing right as far as being able to read and write and that kind of stuff so it gives you an insight into the, into that particular person to emerge kind of interested as who would who would he is when they give the names of the correspondence
individually like this.
Okay. Next slide please.
Okay. So as we wind up.
Newspapers are central to research success, make no mistake about it. So let's end with a question, and an answer the question is, essentially which newspaper source is best.
Okay. Is it a genealogy bank is newspaper archive. newspaper.com is it Fulton postcard. Which one's the best. And this really it's a question that I get most often by asked by genealogies and historians, and it's really the most logical one right and so okay let's
see which one which one of these is the best well. Next slide.
The answer is. And you probably figured it out by my presentation. All of them are right. And that is because the more you research, the more each of them will come into play as you expand and your ancestors are moving about, and you're looking in other
geographic areas, you're going to find all of a sudden that genealogy bank is the you know the resource of the day or resource of the month or a year or whatever called you're just mining a ton of information from that particular resource, because they have
those particular papers.
But when it's all said and done, as we all, as all genealogist know, and we tip our hats to this fact that the ancestors will dictate their, they would they would dictate to us their importance.
So, with that, I believe we are done. And thank you very much for your time. I hope this was helpful.
Well Thank you, Tim, your enthusiasm is infectious. And I think you all have been inspired just by your energy as you pursue your research and newspapers.
Robin, I think we don't have time for Q and a, is that correct.
We do have time for Q and a we're going to skip the final poll.
So we have about seven minutes or so. Okay.
So, Tim.
First first question is actually to ask you to do a little shameless some more shameless self promotion. can you remind us the title of your book.
The title of my book is finding and using African American newspapers, and I've got to say that it really, I put a lot of thought. In, when I wrote it.
I knew it had a specific purpose so it's not a large book, and I get lots of praise from people that they say that it gets straight to the point. It tells you how to find and use African American newspapers, and so they really really appreciate that and
it's a, it's a great guide and I must say it's stood the test of time. Because I have not had to feel rushed to make a second volume, because so much has happened in between.
Almost nearly all the information in there is still very solid, which just a fe, with just a few adjustments.
So here's a question I think you touched on this but the question is, how do you find information about an ancestor around a specific date, this person had a great aunt who was killed but is not finding an announcement of their death.
And I'm thinking maybe part of the answer would be looking for those anniversary announcements. But, what are your thoughts on that.
Well, there can be there can be a lot of a lot of reasons for that in many times, I'm a firm believer this when you when you haven't found the answer to something.
What that means is that you haven't looked long enough right and you have to be, you have to exercise patience because it's probably out there is probably in a paper that's not online, a paper that you have come across yet.
And so you have to exercise some patience. But what you have to also understand when you're not finding it is that these newspapers, unfortunately, before these national newspaper projects came around and things were getting microfilm and whatnot, a lot
of these papers were in print and they, they did not hold up. And so you're very disappointed when you're looking for the answer was in a newspaper.
It had been published, and but that newspaper is among the missing issues when you're looking at that particular paper for that time spot that specific time, you just find that it's missing.
And so that can be frustrating, but I hope that you realize here with social columns and that kind of thing, you still have a shot at it, because if it wasn't if it was in a paper that is not extant where you don't have a copy of that paper for that time
period, you may find it in another paper now.
And it may be in Wyoming and your event happened in Missouri.
So here's an interesting question. How do you identify if you're looking at an actual African American individual if explicit terms aren't being used to identify that person, or is it pretty uncommon not to find people identified by race.
Oh, I might have to, I might have to call this the, the, the question of the symposium for me.
I absolutely love this because, again, I work with, and I've been working with a lot of genealogy researchers I said we, we, we've been teaching and Institute for a long time so we really have learned a lot of things about a lot of topics.
And so one of the things we stress, all the time and point out is, is for researchers again, the genealogy research is, is not a sprint, it's a marathon.
And so you have to do certain things and the more you do that the more the payout is going to be. And so, in this example, what, what I would say in what most seasoned genealogists would say is that you have to learn your community.
Right. You have to learn that community. So when you're looking for assets and such as in their ancestral home. You got to know the fan club right you got to know who the friends associates and neighbors are.
and when you start understanding and knowing and getting out of your silo and learning who else was in your community who was sitting in the church pew with them who was going to work with them etc etc fraternal orders, then you start getting name recognition.
A great example is that Joliet paper I mentioned during my presentation. The Joliet paper is not segragated. It's not segregated in that way so you know to Braidwood column that that might when my, my father grew up and generations were there.
And so now.
I can go in that paper and when it says to Braidwood column and I mentioned African Americans, I'm picking them out.
And then picking them out through familiarity.
And so that's what you have to do you have to develop a familiarity with that particular community which you really need to do and it will it will solve that problem for you.
Well here's here's a question that directly from your presentation. It's about those Augusta, Georgia newspapers, the question was, did you discover those newspapers via ancestor hunt, or Chronicling America.
Boy, I've got.
Boy, I've got so much rubber off the tires of life right now as far as doing genealogy research and newspaper research. I'm trying to remember what what the.
I wish I had, I wish I journaled right I wish I had kept you know little journals of different entries and stuff I've done that a little bit, but I honestly I know I was on the trail and I was doing something in most of the time when I'm doing something
like this, it's related to a newspaper or I'm sorry, it's related to a, a presentation I'm putting together.
And so most likely what that was. It was a presentation I was putting together, and I was looking for examples. And so it kind of, I probably found something here in a newspaper there or whatever.
And I was just looking for good examples, and I came across it, I really think that's probably what happened in this particular example.
Okay.
Um, another follow up question from your presentation is about the Grand Army of the Republic. Ddo you have any general tips and researching African Americans in the GAR, or African American Civil War veterans in general.
I'm loving this audience, let me tell you, I'm, I'm loving you guys because again you hit one of my sweet spots.
Oh my goodness. I'm I, I wrote, I just thought it, they put in the chat my, my email my for my business email.
So feel free to reach out to me the person that wrote that question.
I wrote an article, another one I believe it was for NGS magazine.
I wrote one on researching in the Grand Army of the Republic, and it was more general weather specific African Americans, but I've given a talk a presentation at the national level, on that particular topic.
So I've got information that I can share easily share with with you about that there's a lots of information out there. There's lots of ways to find your GAR ancestor, if they do indeed exist.
Is there a way to ever research people of African descent, in Africa before they became enslaved persons, do any of the newspapers connect them to their possible roots.
Now, now finally somebody getting outside of my league, I, I don't, I don't really do a whole lot of research in general.
Pre emancipation.
Civil War era actually I, I do some but newspaper research wise, I don't do a lot of research at all in the papers that were published before 1865, and I've got to think, and it's probably a better question for Maya than me, but I spent a lot more time
in those newspapers but I, you know, I just don't know if you're going to find that, that kind of stuff.
It seems like a long shot, and it's, it's, and I can go on but let me so yeah I believe it's a long shot, but again, I'm one is very optimistic and believing that where there's a will there's a way.
And I think there's probably going to be the answer your question is probably going to be something that's so obscure something not even thinking about where you'll find that information.
And let me give you an example something like another thing I'm really into is is government records and and congressional hearings, and that type of thing.
And so you just, it's unbelievable how much stuff you find in congressional hearings in this and they asked the most off the wall questions and things like that, you know, and so I think those kinds of rich government resources will probably be the place
where people get good answers to those quite possible discoveries, where they'll be some kind of a deposition or something that goes on related to and they'll start talking about a person in their, their heritage going back or whatever.
Oh, real quick I think we're, we're running out of time but somebody's asking, Is it worth upgrading their newspapers.com subscription to the higher level because they're not.
They're not finding much with the basic subscription.
I'm gonna say this, and I'm trying, I'm I try to try to walk a fine line or whatever.
But, find a friend.
Find by the friend that has the, the Cadillac right and ask them to test drive right sit there with them, or whatever but I would say explore that I can't answer that straight out.
But I would say the best and that's what I did I would, I would do is I would try to find that particular that premium, where I could explore and test drive it and see if it does, you know give you that added value and it's worth you paying the price
for that.
Okay, well thank you, Tim this was like I said this was exciting to I think everybody who listened to you.
And I think we're about ready to wrap up here so as we conclude today's symposium, I want to thank all of you who attended. Your participation demonstrates just how important our work has been to locate and preserve historic newspapers.
Of course our work would not be possible without the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the guidance of the Library of Congress, which is the home of Chronicling America.
We also rely on our institutional partners across the state and volunteer advisory committee to help us decide on directions for Maryland's project, which soon will have contributed nearly half a million pages of historic newspaper content to Chronicling
America.
I especially want to thank our speakers Maya Davis and Tim Pinnick. Their work is inspirational, and it should spur all of us to take a fresh look at newspapers in our research.
I think we learned today that historic newspaper research has its own challenges, but that the rewards can be considerable.
For me, it's worth the effort and I encourage all of you to take the plunge if you haven't done so already.
Despite their ephemerality newspapers help us get to the everyday concerns of people, and as such open a window into the lives of at least some of those, we may have thought were completely erased and forgotten.
This is an important work, which I urge you to continue as the Maryland project looks ahead we are seeking any information you may have about obscure and overlooked Maryland newspapers that would further document the lives of African Americans and other
people underrepresented in the historical record.
We are of course aware that the Baltimore Afro American newspaper is a premier source as we heard from from Tim, but due to copyright and licensing agreements made by the publisher we're not able to include that.
At this time, in our project.
However, we do know that there were other shorter lived newspapers that existed in Baltimore and elsewhere in the state. And if any of you can help point us in their direction we would appreciate that information, and our contact information is on this
slide.
Before we go, I also want to let you know that we will be sending a follow up email to everybody who registered with a link to the recording of today's symposium, a list of resources for investigating historic newspapers and a short survey and Tim's email.
Although we did not have time to answer all of your questions. please use this email address to send us any questions that did not get addressed or if you have any further questions that may have popped up after the symposium has ended. and with that we're going to say goodbye and wish you a pleasant rest of your day.