Making History a Family Affair – A Meaningful and Primary Way in Which History Comes Alive
by Demetrius Haddock 11/28/2022Genealogy is “a family affair!” It is a meaningful and primary way in which history comes alive. People today keep their ancestors alive when they learn and share their stories. History’s lessons await us all and family genealogy is a powerful gateway to developing a deep interest in and appreciation for history. Who is not excited to know “where and who they come from?”
The River Jordan Council (RJC) on African American Heritage is collaborating with Greater Diversity News (GDN) to expand the American story by making written records of the lives of Americans of African descent and others more digitally accessible. The public is invited to transcribe and share stories that expand our understanding of our past. This virtual event consists of two projects: Transcribing Reconstruction and Documenting the Enslaved.
Launched in August 2016, the Smithsonian’s Freedmen’s Bureau Transcription Project (FBTP), the largest crowdsourced endeavor of this type ever sponsored by the Smithsonian, aims to transcribe a wealth of letters, labor contracts, and other Bureau records. For Transcribing Reconstruction, they will release early Reconstruction era North Carolina education records from the “Freedmen’s Bureau” (officially named the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands) specifically for this event.
The availability of these records will increase our understanding of the post-Civil War era and post-Emancipation life. The names found in these digitized records will expand the genealogical resource on sites such as discoverfreedmen.org, familysearch.org, ancestry.com, and Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives and the novel stories discovered will add to the published records at the NC History Center on Civil War, Emancipation and Reconstruction.
The Documenting the Enslaved project, the Cumberland County extension of the People Not Property Project at UNC Greensboro in collaboration with Cumberland County Public Library, provides the public with the opportunity to review Cumberland County property deed books to extract relevant information about enslaved persons. Both of these efforts have discovered stories very few have ever heard, and each project will provide participants with opportunities to discover new stories to share with the world.
The virtual launch of all transcriptions for this joint project will take place on December 3rd from 12:00 noon to 2:00 pm. Click here to register for the event.
Feel free to email the local team for more details.