Historian
Every “runaway” slave advertisement tells a story. No life story is ever complete, but as historians we try to piece together the evidence of past lives and tell the stories of people who can no longer speak for themselves. …
Continue Reading about David Davis, Enslaved Blacksmith and Resister
Slave resistance has a long and honored history in our nation. Leaders like Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey, who planned armed uprisings, are famous figures in black history. Resistance took other forms, too, from verbal …
Continue Reading about Slave Resistance at Antietam Iron Works
If you do African American genealogy, you’ve no doubt heard about the “brick wall” of 1870. That’s the year of the first post-Emancipation U.S. federal Census. Before 1870, we have to rely on records from the era of slavery, …
Continue Reading about Using Census Records for Black Family History before 1865
Finding Otho: The Search for Our Enslaved Williams Ancestors, by Kathy Lynne Marshall, officially hits the bookstores today. I wrote the foreword for this book, which is a rare work on black family history in Washington …
Continue Reading about Finding Otho, a New Book about Local African-American Genealogy
In December 1861, the Civil War was well underway. Both the Union and Confederate armies had marched into Washington County that summer, and western Marylanders were suffering from wartime shortages. African Americans hoped …
Continue Reading about Civil War Christmas at Ebenezer A.M.E. Church, Hagerstown
When I head off to do research in a local or regional archive, my work bag is mostly pre-packed and ready to go. Of course I tweak the contents for the specific place I’m visiting and the specific project I’m working on, but …
Continue Reading about Researching in Archives: My Archive Bag
