VISIT THE AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURAL CENTER in LONG BEACH CALIFORNIA

 AACCLB - African American Cultural Center - Long Beach California

Long Beach is far south in Los Angeles County and far from the fires.  I was able to see this exhibit - small but impressive - and suggest YOU might find it as interesting as I did. The AACCLB has changing exhibits and opportunities to explore.

UNDERGROUND RAILROAD QUILT CODES

SMITHSONIAN FOLK LIFE MAGAZINE : UNDERGROUND RAILROAD QUILT CODES 

Did slaves and Underground Railroad participants set out quilts that were maps to freedom, signals that it was a good time to leave, or that a particular house was a safe house on the way to Ohio Territory?

Patterns:

Bow Tie - Dress in disguise to appear of higher status.

Bear Paw - Follow an animal trail through the mountains to find water and food.

Log Cabin - Seek shelter now, the people here are safe to speak with.

Drunkards Path - Zig Zag as you go along incase you are being stalked by houndes.

Double Wedding Ring - It's now safe to remove chains and shackles. 

 *** This article suggests that the book about the codes, a popular book that I read years ago, is controversial... 

Well, I believe it.  I loved this book!

RAILROAD TIES: ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

 RAILROAD TIES : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

A short and sweet film, Railroad Ties is the perfect film to watch in celebration of Black History Month. Six people who did not know each other were found by Ancestry TM, the genealogy database company, to come to Brooklyn, New York to learn about the abolitionist preacher, the fiery Henry Ward Beecher, at the Plymouth Church. They learned why slaves on the Underground Railroad avoided New York City. Slavery might have been illegal in the north but runaway slaves were still considered property and there were fewer slave catchers in Brooklyn. The Fugitive Slave Act meant they weren't safe till they got to Canada.

Another place on tour is the home of abolitionist Lewis S. Tappen. 

And so the reveal is that the six are connected by history and in five cases by genetics. One descends from Tappen. The others are cousins related to a woman slave he helped escape slavery.

It was touching. My only problem with the film is that we are not told how Ancestry TM found these people. Was it the traditional paper trail or DNA testing or both?

For those readers unfamiliar with The Underground Railroad, terminology like conductor and passenger and station were used but there wasn't a physical train. The terminology was suggestive. You may find archived posts by searching through this blog or clicking on the tag below.

C 2021-2025  Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

Quick Note  February 2025  As I recently visited the African American Cultural Center in Long Beach California, I was apprised that at one point slavery was legal in all then-existing states of the United States, however laws changed by state.

HUNTINGTON LIBRARY DOCUMENTS : SALT WORKERS IN WEST VIRGINIA and SLAVERY

LA TIMES LEGACY OF INDUSTRY FUELED BY SLAVERY : SALT WORKERS WEST VIRGINIA by Makeda Easter - an excellent article.


Excerpt:  Inside the cramped and dusty attic overlooking the pale green Kanawha River in the Appalachian Mountains, stacks of 100 year old business records - deposit books, letters from customers, employee records - balanced precariously on cabinets, lined shelves and sat scattered across the wooden floor.

***

The Huntington has acquired at auction documents of the slave trade and Underground Rail Road.  This acquisition is exciting to me as a genealogist.

HUNTINGTON ORG:   This link tells more about the salt works acquisition as well as another important slavery acquisition.


Excerpt: The first group of materials includes the papers of Zachariah Taylor Shugart... a Quaker abolitionist who operated an Underground Railroad stop at his farm in Cass County, Michigan. The centerpiece of the collection is an account ledger which contains the names of 137 men and women who passed through Shugart's farm while trying to reach freedom in Canada...

...

The second collection is the archive of some 2,000 letters and accounts documenting the history of the Dickinson and Shrewsbury saltworks, a major operation founded in 1808 in what is now Kanawha County, West Virginia...

SLAVE NARRATIVES - HISTORY and TESTIMONY FOR GENEALOGY

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS - INFORMATION ON SLAVE NARRATIVES

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938  DIGITAL IMAGES ONLINE OF TYPED NARRATIVES.

FROM THE SITE: 2300 first person accounts of slavery and 500 black and white photographs of former slaves... The published volumes containing edited slave narratives are arranged alphabetically by the state in which the interviews took place and are there under by the SURNAME of the INFORMANT (i.e. the slave).... Federal field workers were given instructions on what kinds of questions to ask their informants and how to capture their dialects. The result of which may sometimes be offensive to today's readers...

COMMENTARY:  

Realize that the slaves interviewed were old people in their 80's and 90's. 

I've had ONE genealogy project in which I believed I'd found the FAMILY of the owner of a slave who gave a narrative.  The ex-slave's story was about being cruelly abused by a certain man who was likely one of this family's members in South Carolina. The North Carolina branch of this family had not owned slaves and my client said he'd been told by his father that they did not believe in slavery.

What a find if your ancestor is one of the 500 ex slaves whose photos appear.

For many Americans with Southern U.S. roots (though there were slaves in states not thought of as Southern) slave owners and/or slaves are part of their ancestry.  

I suggest you scan through this collection just to get a feel for it. The collection is NOT inclusive of every ex-slave, just a sampling of those still alive and willing to be interviewed. Try scanning for names in your family. Tie this in with whatever census information.  The place of interview is NOT always the place the person was enslaved.

The interviewing writers were told what questions to ask and did their best to record the stories as part of a Works Projects Administration job.  If you have reason to believe one of your family members worked on this assignment, the writer's names appear also.

C 2019  Ancestry Worship Genealogy BlogSpot

WHISPERS OF ANGELS : THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

WHISPERS OF ANGELS :  THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

This film focuses on the roll of Free African-American William Still and White Thomas Garret and their role in the Underground Railroad, the system by those who wished to abolish slavery to create a Corridor of Courage from Maryland's eastern shore to the length of Delaware into Philadelphia and beyond. (There were other routes in the Underground Railroad.)

Edward Asner acts as Garett and Blair Underwood as William Still. They are considered to be the most prominent of the abolitionists. Garett used his own money to finance others including Harriet Tubman and on occasion bid at auction to own and then free a slave.

Do you have an ancestor who was a participant in the Underground Railroad?

C 2012-2025 Ancestry Worship Genealogy BlogSpot All Rights Reserved

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD in PENNSYLVANIA by WILLIAM J. SWITALA

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD in PENNSYLVANIA
by WILLIAM J. SWITALA
Stackpole Books - Pennsylvania C 2001

This is a book recommendation. Get yourself a copy if you're interested in seeing maps with routes. Now the maps leave much to be desired. They don't show the TOPOGRAPHY of the terrain, and so what may look like an easy trip of fifteen miles as the crow flies is actually over Appalachian mountains, rivers, etc. Still, this book gives us the strong impression of the abolitionist movements, the slave catchers, the safe zones (relatively speaking) and much more; on the route to Canada or other places where a slave could be a free human being, there was a lot of help. The Quakers, Presbyterians, Baptists (but not the Southern Baptists), and many others were by conviction against slavery.

Of course millions of people on this earth are still slaves! Check out the National Geographic for reports on this issue.