Blog Posts
As I sift through the old records of Liberty County, Georgia, looking for documents that name enslaved and free African Americans, sometimes stories, important details, research tips, etc, jump out at me. This is a place to document those. Even if you are not researching Liberty County, these may give you ideas that apply to your own research elsewhere.
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The Simple Dignity of a Deed Record
In May 1871, Charlotte Stevens gave her daughter Harriet Harris a “brindled heifer and a black calf.” Why does this deed record matter? Why did it make me cry? Charlotte Stevens was a 76-year-old Black woman in poor health living with her presumable daughter, Charlotte Walthour, in Liberty County, Georgia . Only six years earlier, she herself was considered property. Six years earlier, her daughters were property because they were HER daughters, the children of
Binah McCollough and Eugene Bacon
I’m still reading through post Civil War deed records to find the ones involving African Americans. I keep running across interesting records and taking detours to research them so it’s taking longer than it should. Today’s interesting record: In 1871, Eugene Bacon, a never-married former slaveowner, made over a plot of land to Binah McCollough, who had probably been held in slavery by Bacon, in return for her services as a domestic for the rest
How Did Freedpeople Buy Land?
Have you ever wondered how formerly enslaved people could afford to buy land not very long after Emancipation? A contract in Liberty County, Georgia, shows one option. In 1870, ten freedmen — Stephen Stewart, Pulaski Baker, Thomas Bacon, Plenty Alexander, Mingo Norman, Robert Graham, William Wilson, Henry Baker, Shedrick Bacon, and Stephen Daniels — contracted with Theodore N. Winn to buy his 300-acre Laurel Hill plantation for $1500 worth of labor. The contract stipulated that
Holcombe’s 1870 Liberty County Census Fiasco: The Rest of the Story
In the summer of 1870, Charles R. Holcombe conducted an entirely fraudulent U.S. federal census enumeration for Liberty County, Georgia. Not only were there glaring mistakes in the information for real people, Holcombe made up many of the entries, often using names that were common in the Northeast, where he was from. For example, my great-uncle, J. Sloeman Ashmore, was in Holcombe’s census, but the names of his wife and chiildren were completely wrong. Ashmore’s
What’s Happening at They Had Names (Week of February 1, 2024)
I’ve spoken in the past about the U.S. Southern Claims Commission, set up by Congress after the Civil War to pay for property taken by U.S. soldiers in the South, and how African American claimants had trouble getting their claims approved if they had only Black witnesses. This week I ran across a letter in one of the claim files that says this so much better than I can. John Lambert, a freedman farmer, had
What’s Happening at They Had Names (Week of January 21, 2024)
I’m still working on the project to record post-Civil War land sales and mortgages involving African Americans in Liberty County and have finished Deed Book P (1860-1870). What did I find? Unlike deed books T-V (1882-1886), there were few deeds involving African Americans, whether as parties to the deeds or even just as neighbors to property. This isn’t surprising, of course, given that they had only recently become free and that their participation in the
What’s Happening at They Had Names (Week of January 13, 2024)
It’s 2024 already! I took a break over the holidays to work on other things but I’m back at it now. Documenting Post-War Land Records I am still working on documenting land sales involving African Americans in Liberty County following the Civil War. In the mid-1880s, most land deed and lien records in Liberty County Superior Court involved local African American farmers. The lien records were transactions in which farmers mortgaged most of what they
What’s Happening at They Had Names (Week of December 12)
During 1884-1886, there were 90+ land sales in Liberty County involving African Americans as buyers, sellers or neighbors. These sales can tell you where your ancestor lived and when. The descriptions of the land are quite detailed, but normally are in terms of who the neighbors were so figuring out where they were is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Here is an example both of a typical description and one of the reasons why
What’s Happening at They Had Names (Week of November 11, 2023)
Where was your ancestor in 1885? I’ve picked up a new project lately. In the mid-1880s, Liberty County farmers, almost all of them Black, often made their annual purchases from Robert Q. Cassels store at McIntosh Station in the spring by mortgaging most everything they owned. The loans, all carrying 8 per cent annual interest, were to be paid off in the fall after the crop of rice, cotton and corn were harvested. Cassels filed
A Study in Courage: Liberty County’s African American Voters in 1868
In November 1868, Republican Ulysses S. Grant defeated Democrat Horatio Seymour for the U.S. Presidency on the national stage, but Seymour prevailed in the Georgia vote by a wide margin. It was the first presidential election since the Civil War, and the first in which African Americans could vote in the South. Georgia had just been readmitted to the Union with the proviso that it had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. It did, but the