A Lost Village of Freed Slaves

In the late 1800s a small village of freed slaves began on the outskirts of Cambridge Massachusetts. Not much is known of this community which apparently was called Lewisville. The authors of a new book on the history and settlement of Cambridge discovered records of the village accidentally when studying an 1870 map.

Typical slave cabin

According to the authors, Lewisville was an "African-American settlement that dispersed before the Civil War, where many members went to Africa in the African immigration movement. But it really disappeared in the 1880s."

Read more at In tracing Cambridge history, researchers uncover lost village of freed slaves

Because I was curious about who had lived there, I searched the 1870 census and found 201 black individuals listed as living in Ward 2 of Cambridge. I cannot say with certainty that these were families in Lewisville but I plan on doing more research to see what I can find out.

The Summer 2013 Newsletter of the Cambridge Historical Society has this small excerpt which may provide some clues as to the origin of the community's name:

Just east of Observatory Hill was a free, self-sufficient African American community, known as Lewisville, from the beginning of the 19th century. This settlement was roughly between Concord Avenue, Garden Street, and Shepard Street. Some of the residents were the descendants of slaves of the Vassall family, and by the middle of the 19th century, some had become political. In the early 1850s, Adam Lewis joined the abolitionist colony at Dawn, Ontario, and in 1858 Enoch Lewis led a group of 23 members of the Cambridge Liberian Emigrant Association to settle in St. Paul’s River in Liberia.

In 1850 and 1855 he is found in Ward 1 with other black famiies.

The Dawn Settlement, founded in 1841, was a rural community where Blacks could pool their labour, resources and skills to help each other and incoming settlers. It contained farm land, a saw mill, gristmill, brick yard, rope manufactory and school.  Adam Lewis, age 31, is found in this settlement in the 1851 census of Upper Canada (present day Ontario) with his wife Mary and 6 year old daughter Frances.

 

Adam's death certificate of 1900 indicates his place of birth as Missouri and it is possible that more information could be found if anyone were interested.

Important Maryland Slavery Papers Found in Safe

"The antique documents were tied up by a ribbon and kept in an old safe for years, first in the general stores that Danny Dyer’s family ran in Accokeek, Maryland, and later in his house nearby." (Source: National Post)

When Dyer finally opened the safe, which had been in his family's keeping for generations, he found manumission papers, land records and other documents. Much of the paperwork  recorded the freeing of scores of slaves decades before the Civil War.

Some slave owners freed their slaves immediately, others wrote papers freeing them in the future, often decades later. When the documents were lent to the Surratt House Museum in Clinton, an intriguing fact became apparent, namely that some slave owners freed married couples but kept their children in slavery until girls were 22 and boys were 26 years of age. No doubt this was not as cruel as it sounds at first, but rather a way of ensuring that the children could care for themselves once freed.

These important papers reveal names, ages and details as to how slaves became free - some bought their own freedom, some purchased freedom for other slaves and many were freed by their owners. Some documents are dated as early as 1806.

Continue reading about this amazing find at Mind-boggling trove of historic papers in Maryland reveals the tortuous paths out of slavery

Image: An Overseer Doing his Duty, 1798, Benjamin Henry Latrobe Sketch book, III, 33, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, image from The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas : A Visual Record, Jerome S. Handler and Michael L. Tuite Jr. , Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and University of Virginia, 2006

Ledger Books Records of Life Insurance on Slaves

A life insurance company called New York Life opened in Manhattan’s financial district in the spring of 1845. One of the first things the company did to spur sales was to encourage slave owners to take out insurance on their slaves since they were considered valuable assets.

Ads in southern newspapers began appearing. Within 3 years, over 500 policies had been sold. New York Life kept their ledger books and records of these slave life insurance polices. When the books were discovered, company  turned over the names of slaves and slaveholders as required by law and donated several of the accounting books to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where they are available to the public. The company stored the rest in a private corporate archive. Other life insurance companies also sold policies that covered the lives of slaves but their records have not been found.

The New York Times has the full story at Insurance Policies on Slaves: New YorkLife’s Complicated Past

Credit Images: 
Image 1 Charleston Courier (Charleston, South Carolina). Monday, February 3, 1845

Image 2 Augusta Chronicle (Augusta, Georgia) Tuesday, October 2, 1849.

Descendants of 272 Slaves to Receive Admission Advantages to Georgetown University

"Georgetown University has announced that descendants of 272 slaves, from whose sale the school profited in 1838, will receive "an advantage in the admissions process" as part of a larger effort to address the school’s early ties to slavery."  [Georgetown Univ. Announces Admissions 'Advantage' for Descendants of 272 Slaves Sold in 1838]

School President John DeGioia created the Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation, which issued the recommendations, and has personally met with descendants of the slaves living in Washington State and Louisiana.

Read more about this story and view the Georgetown Slavery Archive at the following sites:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/02/us/slaves-georgetown-university.html?_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/georgetown-university-search-for-slave-descendants.html

Who Do You Think You Are? This Sunday

This Sunday, August 9 at 9/8c TLC will air actress Alfre Woodard’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are?

In the episode, Alfre Woodard sets out to learn more about her paternal grandfather’s family, which she knows little about since her grandfather died before she knew him. 

 She uncovers the triumphant story of her great-grandfather Alec, who endured the horrors of slavery and ascended from servitude to successful landowner, an extraordinary feat of his time.
 
 Ancestry.com , the leading family history company, is teaming up again with TLC as a sponsor. As part of the show sponsorship, Ancestry provides exhaustive family history research on each of the featured celebrities to help make discoveries possible and build out the story of each episode.

 Photo courtesy of TLC

Ben Affleck and The Can of Worms

For those who haven't seen the dozens of news stories online, Ben Affleck was featured on Henry Louis Gates' PBS show Finding Your Roots. During the course of filming, Affleck learned that he has a slave owner ancestor. Leaked emails from Sony between Gates and Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton reveal that Affleck did not want this aired in public and wanted that part edited out. 

You can read the emails yourself but basically Gates made it clear he didn't like the idea of hiding the facts (truth). The producer then said as long as no one else had seen it and it could never be found out, humour Affleck and don't use it. Affleck was referred to as a "mega-star" and both men worried about making sure he got what he wanted.

And so his true family history was hidden. Affleck got the white-washed version he wanted where all his ancestors were public-spirited justice-seeking good guys.  And of course all genealogists know that's a crock! Our ancestors were real people. They include the good and the bad, the farmer and the daredevil. Some we would like if we met them, others ... not so much. 

The bottom line is that what our ancestors did is no reflection on us. Just as we cannot blame ourselves if we discover we had a "bad seed" in the ancestor mix, nor can we take credit for those who did amazing things. We can feel proud of them, or we can feel sorrow over misdeeds. But we need to accept who they were, and that their actions good or bad were in a different time and place. 

It is only by learning about the past that we can stop evil from happening in the future. We learn from mistakes and they should not be hidden or deleted from our family tree or from history.

It's a shame Affleck didn't adopt Bill Paxton's approach on TLC’s "Who Do You Think You Are?", when he learned he had a slave owner as an ancestor. Mr. Paxton's response was that it was a shame but "your history good and bad is your history" And that, Mr. Affleck is the point. 

Embrace your history, both the positive and the negative! Learn from it. Don't attempt to create a fictional family tree full of heroes and noble ancestors. 

But as the saying goes "Karma will out" and now Mr. Affleck's request for an edited  version of his family tree has bitten him in the (ahem) with the truth now known world-wide. What would have been seen by a small number of viewers watching the show, and truly not a big deal has become a huge deal with many casting stones Affleck's way. The perception by many, including me, is that it was a misuse of celebrity status to facilitate censorship. And this is never a good thing.

Credit:  Photo by Stoonn.

Virginia Slaves' Identities Discovered and Online

Recently the Virginia Historical Society found the names and occupations of 3,200 slaves listed in private documents. These documents came from basements, attics and stuffed in drawers of old papers. 

These papers had been donated to the Virginia Historical Society long ago but had never been sorted or read. They consisted of letters, diaries, ledgers, books and farm documents from Virginians dating to the 1600s.

Unknown No Longer: A Database of Virginia Slave Names  is their free online resource listing slaves' names. It is fully searchable. Search results include images of the original record, as seen from the image above.

Read more at Long-lost identities of slaves uncovered in old Virginia papers

Book of Negroes (Black Loyalists) Episode 1 Recap

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill, aired last night. I thought it was very good - powerful and compelling, quite distressing at times, but a story that needs to be told.  It was upsetting to watch as Aminata, a young girl from Africa as her parents were killed and she was abducted by slave traders. At the end of Episode 1 she was in America and being sold at a slave auction.

From the CBC website: Eventually, [Aminata] registers her name in the Book of Negroes, the British ledger of 3,000 Black Loyalists who declared their allegiance to the King and were allowed to leave America for Nova Scotia – and what they believed was the promised land. She lives her final years in England.

The $10-million miniseries premiered on CBC Television on Jan. 7 at 9 p.m. (9:30 in Newfoundland) and continues on consecutive Wednesdays; in February, it will air in the United States on BET (Black Entertainment Television).

It is also available as  The Book of Negroes on Amazon

Births of Children of slaves, 1804-1835 in New Jersey

An interesting database came online recently on the New Jersey State Archives website. It's called Births of Children of slaves, 1804-1835  in New Jersey

According to the website

The records in this series are the direct result of "An act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery" passed by the New Jersey Legislature on 15 February 1804 (P.L. 1804, chap. CIV, p. 251). This law pronounced every child born to a slave mother after 4 July 1804 "free" at birth, but bound as a servant to the owner of the mother until the age of twenty-five for males and twenty-one for females. Any person entitled by the law to such bound service was required to file with the county clerk, within nine months of the birth of the child, a written certificate containing the name of the slave owner and the name, age and sex of the child. The clerk in turn was directed to record the information in a special book for this purpose. The penalty for neglecting to deliver such a certificate was $5 plus an additional $1 for each month of delinquency. The law also allowed for the abandonment of such children by the owners of their mothers at the age of one year. In this case, the child would become a ward of the local overseers of the poor; the slave owner was required to file a notification of abandonment with the county clerk.

Earliest Known British Oil Portrait of a Freed Slave

The Intriguing Story of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo   

The first British portrait of a Black African Muslim and freed slave, on long term loan to the National Portrait Gallery, London, is coming to the South Shields Art Gallery & Museum in South Shields, U.K. as part of its British tour.

Where? South Shields Museum & Art Gallery
When? 29 September 2012 - 9 March 2012

This historically significant portrait of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo is the earliest known British oil portrait of a freed slave, and the first portrait in this country to honour an African subject as an individual and equal.  

The exhibition explores Diallo’s intriguing story, a fascinating tale of faith, identity and the struggle for freedom.

The Slavery Issue Raised on Who Do You Think You Are? Food for Thought

Season 3 of Who Do You Think You Are? sponsored by Ancestry.com with Reba McEntire last night was exceptionally good. That episode brought many issues to the surface not the least of which was the fact that one of Reba's ancestors owned 10 slaves.  Reba was shown documents detailing the selling and acquisition of a few of his slaves, one of them a 3 year old boy, another a 14 month old toddler. Reba was understandably shocked and dismayed on learning this.

The historian assisting in this phase of the research pointed out that many of us will find that we had an ancestor who did own slaves. It's not something many of us want to admit to, and perhaps we don't even know about it (yet) but we may be faced with that hard fact as we research further. I myself was quite dismayed to learn that one of my ancestors Hendrick Meesen Vrooman owned slaves in Schenectady New York before 1690.

I also found my 3rd great-grandfather Levi Peer with a slave in his household in 1830 in Pennsylvania. His brother Edward also owned slaves, but I had no idea this existed in our family. I understand the historical perspective but I still felt great aversion to accepting that one of my ancestors was involved in human trafficking. 

I'd never thought of the possibility that my family were slave owners. We aren't from the southern United States which is where I naively thought all slave owners resided. Too many "Gone With the Wind" type movies left me unaware of the deeper impact slavery had and the far-reaching consequences.

I was glad that Reba's episode brought this to light.  It's important to remember that slavery existed and it was horrific but it existed. And many of us may be faced with learning that one or more of our ancestors participated in it.

My husband has not found slave owners in his family lines but rather the opposite. He is a descendant of a fugitive slave named Jonathan Butler. We've not yet  discovered where in America Jonathan lived before fleeing to Canada so we have no historical context for his life before 1817.

In what to me shows human nature at its less than best, the fact that my husband has black ancestry was hidden for many years by a generation that made the decision to pass as white. One branch proudly proclaimed their black heritage, one branch deliberately hid it (and still hides it), and my husband's branch simply lost the knowledge over the passage of time. 

All my husband's grandmother knew was that her grandfather Joseph disappeared in 1900 over a "scandal" of some kind. We believe the "scandal" was the fact that Joseph's grandfather was the fugitive slave Jonathan Butler, a fact that was not known to the woman who married him. It may be mind-boggling to us in this day and age but prejudice existed and lay hidden or sometimes blatantly exposed for many of our ancestors.

If you are not yet caught up in watching Who Do You Think You Are? you might want to reconsider. Watch an episode and see how it impacts on you.  Many of the episodes raise questions and any discussion that follows can be very helpful. Raising awareness is always a positive outcome as far as I am concerned.

How about you? If you found out your ancestor was either a slave owner or a runaway slave, would you hide that fact? Or would you accept the fact and learn more about it and about the historical events surrounding it?

The Challenge of Finding Our Black Ancestor's Origins

Francis X. Schumacher & Mary Butler

This is a photo of my husband's 2nd great-grand-aunt Mary Schumacher nee Butler (1852-1924) and her husband.

Mary was the sister of my husband's great-great-grandfather Joseph Butler (1856-between 1911-1918).

Mary and Joseph were the grandchildren of Jonathan Butler, a black man living in the Queen's Bush in what was then called Upper Canada (now the province of Ontario)

The lure of free land attracted Black settlers to the Queen's Bush Settlement. The community developed in the Clergy Reserve known as the Queen's Bush, which extended from Waterloo County to Lake Huron.

The majority settled in the southern half of Peel Township in Wellington County but the Queen's Bush Settlement also included the northern half of Wellesley Township and the western portion of Woolwich Township in Waterloo County. This area, eight by twelve miles in size, had a population of approximately 2,500 by 1840. Of these about 1,500 were Black settlers.

A Challenging Black Ancestor

It has been a challenge to research Jonathan Butler and his family.  Early 1800s Ontario records are sparse. What we have managed to find after searching in many old records and having the help of a very kind gentleman in Waterloo Ontario is that Jonathan was born somewhere in the USA circa 1790.  No specific location in the United States is known.

We know he was black. He is listed on various tax, census and assessment records as "Negro" and "African"  We know his wife's name (Elizabeth Ginkins as per the adult baptism of his son Allen, my husband's 3rd great-grandfather) but do not know her origins.

The first record we found for Jonathan is an 1834 Assessment record where he is recorded as "Negro Butler". He owns 100 acres of uncultivated land west of the Grand River in Woolwich Township, Waterloo County. His livestock consisted of 2 cows and 1 horse. Not much to start a farm but by the time of the 1840 assessment he had managed to cultivate 40 acres.

The last record found of Jonathan is this 1840 "Census" which is really a tax and assessment record. He has not been found after that date - no death records, no burial records, no 1851 census record (although many of the 1851 census for Ontario are missing). We have found no record of his wife Elizabeth in any records of any year.

Jonathan Butler's Children

Jonathan's children are found in census records recorded as "African", "Mulatto" and in later years "White". We know from tax records that Jonathan had at least 5 sons and 3 daughters but we only know the names of two with certainty - Allen and George. Both married German women in the Waterloo area.

* George Butler (1832-1902) married Catherine Krump and had 11 children known.

* Allen Butler (1824-1872) married Caroline (Carrie) Weiss and had 8 children known.

* It is believed that Henry (Harry) Butler (ca 1829-between 1861-1871) who married a German woman named Sarah Susannah Foerch is another son

My husband's 3rd great-grandfather Joanes Alexander Alan (called Allen) Butler was baptized into the Catholic Church January 26,1851 at St Agatha, Wilmot Twp, Waterloo Co. He was recorded as the legitimate son of Jonathan Butler and Elizabetha Ginkens. In his marriage record that same year (February 1851) he stated he was born in Toronto. 


Allen's son Joseph, my husband's great-grandfather, is another mystery. He disappears after the 1901 census where he is found with his wife and children living in Seaforth, Huron County Ontario. His estranged wife Caroline (Carrie) left Ontario for Detroit Michigan circa 1909. Family lore said that she left Joseph after some kind of scandal was discovered and that he "went out west". He was never heard from again although our research indicates he may have settled in Manitoba near the border of North Dakota.  If his wife can be believed, he was deceased by May 1918.

The Genealogy Challenges & Unanswered Questions


We have many challenges and puzzles regarding the Butler family and my husband's black heritage. But our two main objectives at this moment are:


1. How do we find our Jonathan Butler's origins in the United States? There are so few records for pre 1851 in Ontario and we have not been able to find what happened to him after that 1840 assessment record or where he was before the 1834 one. So we only have records of him for a six year time frame. We know he was in Toronto circa 1824 when Allen was born. But where was he before 1824 and where was he from 1824 to 1834 when he acquired land in the Queen's Bush? 


2.  We are hoping to find Joseph Butler from 1901 to 1918. Was he in Manitoba? He had a brother Jacob in Pembina North Dakota but we've not found any record of Joseph there. However this brother Jacob lived for several years in Montcalm, Pembina Valley Region, Manitoba. Did Jacob head there after leaving his family (or being kicked out as family lore states)? We are hoping his death record might have information on the birth place of his father Jonathan or mother Elizabeth.

If you have any suggestions or ideas for us in our search, please post them in the Comment section of this blog post. We definitely need advice on where to look next! 

African American History Collection Launch

The National Archives and Footnote.com Launch Online African American History Collection

Over a million pages of original documents, letters and photos, most digitized for the first time.

Lindon, UT - January 29, 2009 – In celebration of Black History Month, Footnote.com is launching its African American Collection. Footnote.com has been working with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, D.C., to digitize records that provide a view into the lives of African Americans that few have seen before.

“These records cover subjects including slavery, military service, and issues facing African Americans dating back to the late 18th century,” explains James Hastings, Director of Access Programs at NARA. “Making these records available online will help people to better understand the history and sacrifice that took place in this country.”

Footnote.com has spent the last two years with NARA compiling this collection and is currently working on adding more records that will be released in the upcoming months. African American records currently on Footnote.com include:

Service Records for Colored Troops in the Civil War – Records for the 2nd-13th infantries including enlistment papers, casualty sheets, oaths of allegiance, proof of ownership and bills of sale.

American Colonization Society – Letters and reports relating to this colony established in 1817 for free people of color residing in the U.S.
Amistad Case – Handwritten records of this landmark case beginning in 1839 involving the Spanish schooner Amistad, used to transport illegal slaves.
Southern Claims Commission – Petitions for compensation resulting from the Civil War.

“The Southern Claims Commission records are a very rich, often overlooked resource for African American family research. They often contain information that cannot be found anywhere else,” says Toni Carrier, Founding Director of the USF Africana Heritage Project. “These records document the experiences of former slaves during the Civil War and in the days immediately after. Many contain detailed narratives that make it possible for descendants to envision the lives and experiences of ancestors.”

Footnote.com is also working on additional record collections that will be released shortly. Those records include:

Records of the US District Court for the District of Columbia Relating to Slaves, 1851-1863 – includes slave schedules, manumission papers and case papers relating to fugitive slaves.

Records for the Emancipation of Slaves in the District of Columbia, 1862-63 – minutes of meetings, docket books and petitions pertaining to emancipation of slaves.

Registro Central de Esclavos 1872 (Slave Schedules) – registers from Puerto Rico giving information for each slave: name, country of origin, name of parents, physical description, master’s name and more.

Records Relating to the Suppression of the African Slave Trade and Negro Colonization, 1854-1872 - letters, accounts, and other documents relating to the suppression of the African slave trade.

Correspondence of the Military Intelligence Division Relation to “Negro Subversion” 1917-1941 - record cards and correspondence of the Military Intelligence Division (MID) that relate to activities of blacks in both civilian and military life.

In addition to these records, Footnote.com also features member contributions that include topics ranging from the Underground Railroad to Women Abolitionists to African Americans receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor.

“The contributions to our site have been impressive,” says Russell Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. “It’s exciting to see people connect with history and with each other.”

You may use the Footnote.com Free Trial to view the Black History documents

Released Prisoners on the ship Erasmus van Rotterdam 1638

Source: Journal of the Ambassy of the Lord Anthonis de Liedekerke, Extracted entries from Adriaen Matham's Journal 1640-1641. translated and transcribed by Cor Snabel & Liz Johnson, published on Olive Tree Genealogy with permission May 2007.

Preface: On the 1st of September 1640, the ship Gelderlandt sailed from Texel on a diplomatic mission to the King of Morocco. On board were the Dutch Ambassador Anthonie de Liedekerke, Lijsbeth Jans with her brother-in-law Jacob Arissen, and the painter Adriaen Matham.

The 1640-41 diplomatic mission to Morocco was made in order to renew the Dutch alliance with Morocco, and to effect the release of some fifty men who had been employed aboard the ship Erasmus van Rotterdam. This ship had stranded off the coast of Morocco near Agadir in May 1638, and her crew had been enslaved there.

By 1640, funds had been raised for ransom, and Admiral Liedekerke was delegated to negotiate their ransom and release. Jan Janszoon assisted with this dual mission by making certain arrangements with his Moroccan associates for Liedekerke. Adriaen Matham, along with another artist, were sent along on this mission, possibly to make observations about the geography of countries they passed, and to record observations about the persons with whom they came in contact.

View the names of the slaves (ordinary Dutchmen) who sailed with the ship Erasmus van Rotterdam on 17th April 1638 in the service of the West India Company