In Black and White: Cross-Cultural Genealogy

An interesting discovery while searching for USCT: New Bern Enlistments Ferries, ferries, ferries... It has been a long and difficult search to discover anything new about the location of ferries from the South Side of Neuse River to New Bern in 1853. I have found several mentions, but nothing very specific... However , in the process of working on creating a listing of all the soldiers who enlisted in New Bern for the United States Colored Troops in 1864, I came across the following video which I think you might find very interesting. One of the interviewers, Bernard George, is a member of my husband's family tree: his 3rd cousin. Their mutual relation was Theophilus George, the father of both Martha Ann George and James George. James was the youngest child born to Theophilus' first wife, Mary Elizabeth Morris in 1846, while my husband's great grandmother Martha Ann was the oldest child born to Theophilus' second wife, Sarah Harkley, in 1849. I invite you to t...

File Box 1, File No. 1.4, Part I.2 Franklin, John Hope. "The Free Negro In The Economic Life Of Ante-Bellum North Carolina, Parts I & II," in The North Carolina Historical Review, Volume XIX, No. 1, July 1942, pp. 239-259; and Volume XIX, No. 4, October 1942, pp. 358-375. Occupational Restrictions Against Free Negroes ...although a large number of free Negroes made their living peddling, the legislature did not hesitate to put an effective check to it when the movement of free Negroes from place to place became distasteful to them (p. 246) .  Underlying a petition of the citizens of Lenoir County to the Assembly in 1831 was a fear that free Negroes would entice slaves to commit acts of thievery in their county, and that they provided bad morale for slaves. The petitioners also stated that  ...free Negroes from New Bern brought in cakes, tobacco, and spirituous liquors to sell... (p. 247) . The outcome was that in 1831 the  General Assembly passed a law ....

File Box 1, File No. 1.4, Part I.1 Franklin, John Hope. "The Free Negro In The Economic Life Of Ante-Bellum North Carolina, Parts I & II," in The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. XIX, No. 3, July 1942, pp. 239-259; and Vol. XIX, No. 4, October 1942, pp. 358-375. Apprentice Bonds As early as 1733 children of free Negro parents were being bound out as apprentices. In that year it was reported to the upper house of the General Assembly that "divers free people, Negroes and mulattoes were bound out until they came to 31 years of age, contrary to the consent of the Parties bound out." . . . On July 12, 1733, the General Assembly passed an act declaring that the binding out of free Negroes against their consent was an illegal act (p. 240) .  We've discussed apprenticeship bonds before, especially in relation to Isaac Carter and his siblings. Beyond the historical laws dictating the conditions under which minors could be apprenticed, Franklin provides...

File Box 1, File No. 1.4.Part II.1 Franklin, John Hope. "The Free Negro In The Economic Life Of Ante-Bellum North Carolina, Parts I & II," in The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. XIX, No. 3, July 1942, pp. 239-259; and Vol. XIX, No. 4, October 1942, pp. 358-375. Distribution of wealth As I came to the end of the article, I was reminded of something I had written in my application for the NEH Unaffiliated Independent Scholar Fellowship, 2008. . . . Page 370 displays a table entitled, FREE NEGROES HAVING PROPERTY VALUED AT MORE THAN $2,500, with the commentary, While this table does not represent the average holdings of the free Negro in ante-bellum North Carolina, it suggests that there was a number of individual cases in which free Negroes rose to a position of economic independence, despite obstacles (p. 371) . The table contains the names, occupations and valuations of estates for fifty-three persons. Below is a table which I created to anal...

File Box 1, No. 1.4.Part II.2 Franklin, John Hope. "The Free Negro In The Economic Life Of Ante-Bellum North Carolina, Parts I & II, in The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. XIX, No. 3, July 1942, pp.239-259; and Vol. XIX , No. 4, October 1942, p. 358-375. Free Negro slave owners Franklin discusses the two motives a free Negro owned slaves: for the purpose of advancing their economic well-being,  and for benevolent reasons (p. 373). John C. Stanly , he notes, owned slaves for both reasons. His case is famous. He was the son of John Wright Stanly . You can read more about them in the links provided. Throughout his discussion of how many slaves were owned by free Negroes from 1790 to 1830, my mind kept going back to the case of Margaret Carter, our Isaac's grand-aunt. She was the daughter of Abel Carter, and is noted in Paul Heinegg's Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware as Margaret Fenner, sister ...

File Box 1, File No. 1.3: Farlow, Gale. "Black Craftsmen in North Carolina," in North Carolina Genealogical Society Journal, Volume XI, No. 1, February 1985, pp. 2-13; continued in Volume XI, No. 2, May 1985, pp. 91-103. I had hoped that this article might discuss the various crafts in which African Americans were engaged in the period pre-1850; however, it served as a synopsis of other researchers' investigations. The author states that Four factors were considered necessary for identification of black craftsmen working before 1850: name, trade, location by town or county, and at least one documented date. This method necessarily eliminated any referenced not having all four criteria . . . . would seem to indicate that the list of those identified is only a small part of the total number who were working in North Carolina before 1850. . . . Of the 291 craftsmen identified, 159 were free persons and 132 of them were cited as apprentices. The slaves numbered 132 with ...

File Box 1, File No. 1.2: Watson, Alan D. African Americans in Early North Carolina: A Documentary History. Raleigh: Office of Archives and History, North Carolina Dept. of Cultural Resources, 2005. Available at Amazon.com The Contents page lists the following chapters: Slavery and Slave Trade Slaves: Property, Labor, and              Emancipation Family The Slave Code Resistance to Slavery Discipline and Punishment Urban Slavery Free African Americans I also photocopied the Sources Cited . When photocopying directly from book sources I always photocopy: the title page, the bibliographical information page, the table of contents, and pertinent parts of the index. When searching the index, I highlight the pages containing keywords that relate to my research; but then, I check to see if there is relevant contextual information before and after the keyword. Sometimes it may be only a paragraph or so before or after. . . other tim...

File Box: 1, File No. 1.1: Franklin, John Hope. The Free Negro In North Carolina: 1790-1860. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1943. Introduction: Available at Amazon.com In May of 2008 I applied for an National Endowment of the Humanities Independent Scholar Fellowship to research and write a prequel to this monumentous book, entitled: Migration and Settlement Patterns of Free Negroes in Colonial America, Part I: The Southern Colonies, 1728-1790. The problem, I was told, was that the scope was too large and that I concentrated on too many primary sources...I needed more secondary sources. They had me completely baffled on the sources issue; but, after a short period of grieving, I regrouped and continued the research from a different angle. The years selected began with the year the Dividing Line between Virginia and North Carolina were established and the territory was opened for settlement and ended where John Hope Franklin began, but with emphasis on other aspects not covered by the...

Craven County in 1853 Sitting and staring at page after page of digital newspaper entries of a search of  <1853 "New Bern> which results in only two sources: The Fayetteville Observer and the New York Times, is getting me nowhere fast. Not much of interest appears in pages for the amount of time spent. Pack Memorial Library, in Modern Asheville , by Troy Winterrowd When we first moved to Asheville, NC in February 2007 I began an intensive dive into every known book and document available for Craven County and Eastern North Carolina at Pack Memorial Library. It was a sort of frenzied find-all-you-can-as-quick-as-you-can  adventure in research. Sometimes the genealogist instinct tells us to absorb it all now  because tomorrow is not promised. After several years of scouring the North Carolina Collection, my favorite local history librarian asked me if I hadn't read every book by now. Almost, I replied, almost.  And so it was... I started out taking ...