THE AUTRY - OFFICIAL SITE
Just went to see a terrific exhibit - three hours in the hall - where I learned so much more about our American history, how complicated the question of slavery was throughout what would become our nation, back in the day when half of it was still territory, in dispute.
So here's a little story. Twenty or more years ago it was still not acknowledged, despite the documents that genealogists would find, not even by some college history professors, that some Native Americans had slaves. I myself found documentation proving this in a western county of North Carolina, but it just wasn't acknowledged. A research friend of mine actually went to a professor at a college in Florida where he had once attended to discuss his findings and was told to his face that this had "never happened."
But this exhibit admits it. Even the Cherokee chief John Ross had slaves.
Could it be that people did not see much difference between a slave and chattel labor? It seems so.
In fact, the very poor who survived through chattel labor were in a class only slightly higher than a slave and individual circumstances being what they were, might not have actually been better off. They might not have been "owned" the same but their living conditions could be deplorable.
I had not known that coal miners also hired and imported immigrant labor where men were put under contract to work. I'd known about servants who came into the early colonies and worked years to pay off the price of their ticket, but didn't know this happened in the mid 1800's during the Gold Rush.
Also up for going against stereotype: Prostitutes in the Wild Wild West, often depicted as willing and having a great time of it, when it's known that sex trafficking went on. (I've known about the situation in San Francisco with imported Chinese women and children, often put in cages and locked underground, even given the tools to commit suicide once they became infected with VD, but somehow I bought the movie depictions of White Women going west for the opportunity to make money the only way they could among the gold miners.)
A simply amazing array of historical objects, paintings, proclamations, and other museum-worthy items are on display, along with some diary narratives read by actors at the touch of a button that give various perspectives.
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This brings up the USE OF DIARIES and NARRATIVES in your genealogy an history research. Some of you may know about the SLAVE NARRATIVES that were collected by the WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION which are on a searchable database. Additionally, you may find narratives in other places, such as written narratives available through FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUESTS, as well as some military related documents. WILLS can also be a form of NARRATIVE.
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