Many families were forcibly separated during slavery. Children were separated from their parents, spouses were removed from one another, and siblings were lost. The process was a traumatic one for the survivors, and both during and after the period of legal slavery, many people searched for their lost families—in some cases, unsuccessfully. Lone survivors placed ads in newspapers across the United States in search of their families, many of which were placed during the nascency of the black press. These "Information Wanted" and "Lost Friends" sections were common, and the Last Seen project, sponsored by Villanova University and Philadelphia's Methodist Episcopal Church, has been digitizing them since 2016.
Background
An ad placed in the Southern Shield of Arkansas in 1850, selling a 15 or 16 year old girl
During the period of legal chattel slavery in the United States, many families were fractured by the selling of individual enslaved persons as chattels (personal property).[1] The experience was a deeply traumatic one—referred to as ambiguous loss—especially for children.[2] Elizabeth, a woman who was sold as a child, said she "grew so lonely and sad I thought I should die, if I did not see my mother".[3]
Some children did not know that their separation would be a permanent one, some only learned later in life, and some were placed into surrogate familial relationships with other enslaved people.[4] Others were reassured by religious promises that they would be reunited, either in life or in Heaven, or that they would be protected by God from the harsh realities of enslaved life.[5] Even in old age, many enslaved people continued to think about their lost families; one 86-year-old man named Caleb Craig said "I has visions and dreams of her [his mother], in my sleep, sometime yet".[6]
Reunification attempts and ads
Babies was snatched from their mothers' breasts and sold to speculators. Children was separated from sisters and brothers and never saw each other again. Course they cry; you think they not cry when they was sold like cattle?
Both before and after emancipation, some people went to search for their lost families, while others tried to forget their past and create new ones.[8]Moses Roper, for instance, escaped slavery searching for his mother, who he eventually found.[9] Vilet Lester wrote a letter to her former owner, asking to be bought so she could be with her child, and expressing a desire "to [k]now what has Ever become of my Presus little girl"; it is not known whether she ever met with her daughter again.[10]Henry Bibb's wife, Malinda, was still held in bondage when he escaped slavery; though he tried for years to find her again, he remarried and stopped searching.[11]
Following emancipation,[upper-alpha 1] many people turned to newspapers to find their loved ones, including newly-established African-American newspapers (such as the South Carolina Leader and Free Man's Press) and church periodicals (such as the Christian Recorder and the Star of Zion).[13] The ads included personal information, and expressed a desire to reunite with their lost families; they were placed in special sections of the newspaper, which included titles such as "Information Wanted" or "Lost Friends".[13] Some of the newspapers charged a significant amount of money to place advertisements—for instance, the South Carolina Leader charged $2.50 a month and the Southwestern Christian Advocate had a more elaborate pricing scheme—but most emancipated African Americans were extremely poor.[14]
The ads were common,[15] and they often used the rhetoric of voluntary separation (e.g., "I left them [children] with Sallie Anderson"), even though they were likelier sold to new owners.[16] The Christian Recorder's editor received so many ads that he threatened that the paper "shall be under the necessity of abridging them".[17] In an 1865 issue of the Union Banner, an anonymous writer recognized the ubiquity of the "Information Wanted" ads, and offered religious reassurance to them: "the fate of the loved one" will finally be revealed "one day when time has ceased to be" (in Heaven), since there were countless "nameless graves scattered throughout the land" containing the bodies of lost family members.[18] To increase the spread of the information, many black churches began reading the ads during services.[19] The searches for lost family were complicated by slave name practices: Often, the only names given were first names, which were fluid and changed frequently.[20] Thornton Copeland, for instance, was sold at a young age; an ad, placed 21 years later, asked to reunify with his mother – identified only by the name "Betty".[21]
Success and cultural legacy
Tom Carnahan (a police officer in Lincoln, Nebraska) and his brother (living in Texas), both formerly enslaved, were reunited in 1884 because of a familial reunification ad.
Attempts at reunification, whether by physical searches or by placing newspaper ads, were largely unsuccessful, and most formerly enslaved persons never reunified with their families.[22] Camps for emancipated African Americans, called freedpeople's camps, were somewhat more successful in reunifying families than ads.[23] Even if family members were reunited by accident, they would sometimes not recognize each other; Henry Brown, a former slave, told a story (possibly fictitious) about a young man, sold in his childhood, who accidentally married his own mother after emancipation.[24] Though rare, familial reunification was an emotional event.[25] Reunified siblings and parents found new meaning in their lives, while reunified spouses occasionally had trouble living together, especially in cases where people remarried and had living spouses.[26] For those who married more than once and had children, sometimes both spouses would claim the children.[27] The ads continued being printed until around 1910 (though at least one ad exists from 1922),[28] and later printings often used the novel phrase "my people".[29]
Moments of reunification have been represented in literature, including Mark Twain's "A True Story, Repeated Word for Word As I Heard It" (1874) and Charles W. Chesnutt's "The Wife of His Youth" (1898).[30] A physical artifact from familial fragmentation survives today: Ashley's Sack, which an enslaved mother (Rose) gave to her daughter (Ashley) before Ashley was sold.[31] Ashley and her mother never saw each other again, and the sack was embroidered by one of Ashley's descendants in 1921; it recounts the story of the gifted sack and the family's inability to reunify.[31]
Since the 1950s, and continuing in the 21st century, the descendants of enslaved African Americans have continued to search for their lost families.[32] The Last Seen project, sponsored by Villanova University and Philadelphia's Methodist Episcopal Church, has digitized hundreds of family reunification ads since its launch in 2016.[33] By early 2017, two families had been reunited because of the project,[33] and as of 2022, around 3500 ads have been digitized.[34] Forums exist online that serve the same purpose as the original "Information Wanted" ads, such as the Unknown No Longer project sponsored by the Virginia Museum of History and Culture.[35] In these forums, posters engage in similar rhetorical practices to reunification ads: They both list all known biographical details of their lost families and request help in finding more information.[35]
Notes and references
Notes
1 2 Though rare, there were some ads placed prior to widespread emancipation. The Christian Recorder has at least one such ad from 1861.[12]
Cole, Jean Lee (2006). "Information wanted: The Curse of Caste, Minnie's Sacrifice, and the Christian Recorder". African American Review. 40 (4): 731–742. JSTOR40033749.
Titus, Jill Ogline (2 June 2014). "An unfinished struggle: Sesquicentennial interpretations of slavery and emancipation". Journal of the Civil War Era. 4 (2): 338–347. doi:10.1353/cwe.2014.0044. S2CID144857634.
Wong, Edlie (2006). "'Neither is memory always thus avenging': Longing for kinship in Julia C. Collins' The Curse of Caste and the Christian Recorder". African American Review. 40 (4): 687–704. JSTOR40033749.
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved people around the world.
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The outfitted European slave ships of the slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were from Central and West Africa who had been sold by West African slave traders mainly to Portuguese, British, Spanish, Dutch, and French slave traders, while others had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids; European slave traders gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at forts on the African coast and then brought them to the Americas. Except for the Portuguese, European slave traders generally did not participate in the raids because life expectancy for Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa was less than one year during the period of the slave trade.
The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South. Slavery was established throughout European colonization in the Americas. From 1526, during the early colonial period, it was practiced in what became Britain's colonies, including the Thirteen Colonies that formed the United States. Under the law, an enslaved person was treated as property that could be bought, sold, or given away. Slavery lasted in about half of U.S. states until abolition in 1865, and issues concerning slavery seeped into every aspect of national politics, economics, and social custom. In the decades after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, many of slavery's economic and social functions were continued through segregation, sharecropping, and convict leasing.
The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was a law passed by the 31st United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern interests in slavery and Northern Free-Soilers.
The emancipation of the British West Indies refers to the abolition of slavery in Britain's colonies in the West Indies during the 1830s. The British government passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, which emancipated all slaves in the British West Indies. After emancipation, a system of apprenticeship was established, where emancipated slaves were required by the various colonial assemblies to continue working for their former masters for a period of four to six years in exchange for provisions. The system of apprenticeship was abolished by the various colonial assemblies in 1838, after pressure from the British public, completing the process of emancipation. These were the steps taken by British West Indian planters to solve the labour problems created by the emancipation of the enslaved Africans in 1838.
The history of George Washington and slavery reflects Washington's changing attitude toward the ownership of human beings. The preeminent Founding Father of the United States and a hereditary slaveowner, Washington became increasingly uneasy with it. Slavery was then a longstanding institution dating back over a century in Virginia where he lived; it was also longstanding in other American colonies and in world history. Washington's will provided for the immediate emancipation of one of his slaves, and additionally required his remaining 123 slaves to serve his wife and be freed no later than her death, so they ultimately became free one year after his own death.
A freedman or freedwoman is a formerly enslaved person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, slaves were freed by manumission, emancipation, or self-purchase. A fugitive slave is a person who escaped enslavement by fleeing.
Slavery in Maryland lasted over 200 years, from its beginnings in 1642 when the first Africans were brought as slaves to St. Mary's City, to its end after the Civil War. While Maryland developed similarly to neighboring Virginia, slavery declined here as an institution earlier, and it had the largest free black population by 1860 of any state. The early settlements and population centers of the province tended to cluster around the rivers and other waterways that empty into the Chesapeake Bay. Maryland planters cultivated tobacco as the chief commodity crop, as the market for cash crops was strong in Europe. Tobacco was labor-intensive in both cultivation and processing, and planters struggled to manage workers as tobacco prices declined in the late 17th century, even as farms became larger and more efficient. At first, indentured servants from England supplied much of the necessary labor but, as their economy improved at home, fewer made passage to the colonies. Maryland colonists turned to importing indentured and enslaved Africans to satisfy the labor demand.
Slavery in Virginia began with the capture and enslavement of Native Americans during the early days of the English Colony of Virginia and through the late eighteenth century. They primarily worked in tobacco fields. Africans were first brought to colonial Virginia in 1619, when 20 Africans from present-day Angola arrived in Virginia aboard the ship The White Lion.
An Act for the Release of certain Persons held to Service or Labor in the District of Columbia, 37th Cong., Sess. 2, ch. 54, 12 Stat. 376, known colloquially as the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act or simply Compensated Emancipation Act, was a law that ended slavery in the District of Columbia, while providing slave owners who remained loyal to the United States in the then-ongoing Civil War to petition for compensation. Although not written by him, the act was signed by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on April 16, 1862. April 16 is now celebrated in the city as Emancipation Day.
The treatment of slaves in the United States often included sexual abuse and rape, the denial of education, and punishments like whippings. Families were often split up by the sale of one or more members, usually never to see or hear of each other again.
Slavery in Somalia existed as a part of the East African slave trade. To meet the demand for menial labor, Bantus from southeastern Africa slaves were exported from the Zanzibar and were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers in East Africa and other areas in Northeast Africa and Asia. People captured locally during wars and raids were also sometimes captured by Somalis and Ethiopians, Oromo and Nilotic origin. However, the perception, capture, treatment and duties of both groups of slaves differed markedly, with Oromo favored because Oromo subjects were not viewed as linguistically and culturally different by their Somali owners.
Slavery in Florida is more central to Florida's history than it is to almost any other state. Florida's purchase by the United States from Spain in 1819 was primarily a measure to strengthen the system of slavery on Southern plantations, by denying potential runaways the formerly safe haven of Florida.
Ashley's Sack is a mid-1800s cloth sack featuring an embroidered text that recounts the slave sale of a nine-year-old girl named Ashley and the parting gift of the sack by her mother, Rose. Rose filled the sack with a dress, braid of her hair, pecans, and "my love always". The gift was likely passed down to Ashley's granddaughter, Ruth (Jones) Middleton, who embroidered their story on to the sack in 1921.
Heather A. Williams is a scholar of African American studies and lawyer. She serves as Presidential Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
William Fox was a radical abolitionist pamphleteer in late 18th-century Britain. Between 1773 and 1794 he ran a bookshop at 128 Holborn Hill in London; from 1782 he was in a business arrangement with the Particular Baptist Martha Gurney, who printed and sold his and others' pamphlets.
The Christian Recorder is the official newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and is the oldest continuously published African-American newspaper in the United States. It has been called "arguably the most powerful black periodical of the nineteenth century," a time when there were few sources for news and information about Black communities.
The history of slavery in Colorado began centuries before Colorado achieved statehood when Spanish colonists of Santa Fe de Nuevo México (1598–1848) enslaved Native Americans, called Genízaros. Southern Colorado was part of the Spanish territory until 1848. Comanche and Utes raided villages of other indigenous people and enslaved them.
Marriage of enslaved people in the United States was generally not legal before the American Civil War (1861–1865). Enslaved African Americans were considered chattel legally, and they were denied human or civil rights until the United States abolished slavery with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Both state and federal laws denied, or rarely defined, rights for enslaved people.
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