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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Sent to Liberia by Jacob Wood
In 1844, Jacob Wood, a wealthy white planter of McIntosh and Liberty Counties in Georgia, wrote his will in Masschusetts, directing that all of the enslaved people he owned at the time of his death were to be sent to Haiti. Jacob Wood’s 1844 will directing that his enslaved people be removed to Haiti Wood had evidently been influenced by Florida planter and slaveowner Zephaniah Kingsley, who believed in interracial marriage, caring for his mixed-race children,
Henrietta Hamilton, Free Woman of Color
In antebellum Liberty County, Georgia — amongst some of the wealthiest slaveowners of the time — Henrietta (“Hetty”) Hamilton, a free woman of color born at the end of the 18th century, lived independently on 50 acres of land given her as a “life estate” by a wealthy white planter and slaveholder named Jacob Wood. When he sold the land, he conditioned the sale on continuation of her life estate. Henrietta Hamilton herself also held
Slaveholder Series: William McWhir
An excerpt of this post appears in Irish public historian Martine Brennan’s powerful project “Enslavement to Citizenship” documenting Irish-born Americans’ participation in slavery. William McWhir: Irish-Born Educator, Clergyman, Slaveholder William McWhir – born in County Down, Ireland in 1759 and ordained as a Presbyterian clergyman there – was a well-known educator and clergyman of his time in the United States. He knew George Washington well, and corresponded with him. After McWhir’s death in Georgia in 1859, he
Unsung Heroes Award
The Genealogy Guys Podcast and Vivid-Pix recently announced that I had received their Unsung Heroes Award in the “individual” category. The award is intended to recognize “those members of the genealogy community who digitize or index photos and other documents of value to genealogical researchers.” The award was for my website, TheyHadNames.net, which I created to document the names of African Americans who lived in Liberty County, Georgia, in mostly antebellum records, to aid their