Ari Wilkins recently gave the program Looking for my babies: Freedmen searching for Family, about African Americans desperately searching for their missing family members in the wake of Emancipation by using resources such as the Freedmen's Bureau and newspapers. Excerpts from her handout are below.
The Freedmen's Bureau worked to reunite families by writing letters and inquiring within communities. They also helped to arrange transportation to reunite relatives.
For decades following the Civil War, newspapers had specialized columns for former slaves searching for family. Rich in genealogical detail, these ads describe the missing relative and applicant, aliases, where and when the relative was last seen, a history of slave ownership, and migration patterns.
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| South Carolina Leader (Charleston, SC), 8 December 1866. Digital image http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov : accessed 3 June 2021. |
Look for columns like "Information Wanted," "Lost Friends," and "Last Seen." While they may be in mainstream newspapers, also search in African American newspapers like Black Republican (New Orleans), Colored Tennessean (Nashville), South Carolina Leader (Charleston), Free Man's Press (Galveston), Colored American (Augusta), and Colored Citizen (Cincinnati), as well as church newspapers like Christian Recorder (Philadelphia), Southwestern Christian Advocate (New Orleans), and Star of Zion (Charlotte).
Supplemental genealogical resources include the Slave Narratives, census records, vital records and the Periodical Source Index (PERSI).
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