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“At the beginning of the rebellion I sympathized with the Yankee side I felt glad and long[ed] to see the day come and when they

During the Civil War, Joel Hodges of Liberty County slept with a gun beside his bed…not out of fear of the U.S. Army but because

Prime Hargrave, a 75-year-old formerly enslaved man who said he had lived in Liberty County, Georgia all his life, testified to the Southern Claims Commission

Mack Golding was born on Thomas Mallard’s plantation as a slave, and became free when the Union Army passed through Liberty County on foraging raids

On a cold morning in December 1864, a group of enslaved African Americans were sitting down to a wedding feast in the yard at Joseph

Andrew Girardeau’s claim for compensation for property taken by U.S. soldiers when they liberated Liberty County, Georgia’s enslaved population while foraging for Sherman’s Army in

William (“Billy”) Gilmore was about 43 at the end of 1864 when the soldiers of Sherman’s Army arrived in Liberty County, Georgia, where he was

In 1877, Jacob Dryer, described as a “very prosperous and thrifty man,” made a claim against the U.S. government for $485 in property taken by

“I was so glad to be set free it seemed to me what little time I had been free was a long time.” Lafayette Delegal

“At the beginning of the rebellion, I sympathized with the Union party. My feelings were all for the Union party for they were for our

When Doddy Brown, a 53-year-old formerly enslaved man from Liberty County, applied to the Southern Claims Commission in 1877, his claim played into a larger

“My name is Richard Bacon. I am 29 years old.  I belonged to Laurence Winn.  My father was Mr. Tom Mallard’s old driver Joe Bacon

Pompey Bacon, formerly enslaved by Thomas Mallard since birth at the latter’s plantation a few miles from the Midway Congregational Church in Liberty County, Georgia,

In his 1873 Southern Claims Commission claim, Joseph Bacon said thathis name was Joseph Bacon, Sr, 74 years old, and a former slave ofThomas Mallard.

The Southern Claims Commission case files offer the opportunity to distinguish two James Andersons, both previously enslaved, who lived in Liberty County in the 1870s.