|
events
and news |
The understanding of the Underground Railroad as a system is being expanded by exciting new local research. During the past few months, there has been the successful conclusion of a major documentation project in the Finger Lakes of New York State in Cayuga County and the beginning of a similar project in Seneca County. We had a recent published history of Hinsonville, an African-American community in Chester County, Pennsylvania, near (and predating) Lincoln University, and another of Yellow Hill, a 19th century community in Adams County, Pennsylvania. As someone interested in Quaker
history, I have been particularly interested in the suggestions of interactions between these communities in Pennsylvania and central New York and the Society of Friends. There is more work being done and to be done.
On Sunday, I was speaking at Greenwich Friends Meeting in Cumberland County, New Jersey, and happened to mention some of these studies and was quickly informed that the adjacent community of Springville, centered on the Othello African Methodist Episcopal Church, had 19th century origins and considerable evidence of Underground Railroad activity, including connections across the water with Delaware.
We are also finding family networks, connecting successful freedom seekers in Canada or New York State or Pennsylvania with their origins to the south. This work is complicated by family name changes (some people had one name while enslaved, another while escaping, and another in freedom, and sometimes people from the same family adopted different names) as well as the understandable reluctance to report true places of origin to federal census takers. We also see similar family networks operating among the white abolitionists and Underground Railroad operatives. I was recently asked about an individual involved in a legal case involving the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia, and discovered that his son-in-law was involved in the Underground Railroad at one location in Delaware, and his son-in-law's half-brother was involved in similar activities at another location in Delaware. The Underground Railroad speeded along at times on
rails supported by ties of race, relation and familial relationships.
The truth is out there.
PENNSYLVANIA ABOLITION SOCIETY IN PENNSYLVANIA LEGACIES
The November 2005 issue of Pennsylvania Legacies, published by The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, is now available. This issue focuses on the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.
Feature articles: Richard Newman, "The Pennsylvania Abolition Society: Restoring a Group to Glory"; Emma Lapsansky-Werner, "Teamed Up with the PAS: Images of Black Philadelphia" ; Christopher Densmore, "Seeking Freedom in the Courts: The Work of the Pennsylvania Society for promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and for the Relief of Free Negroes unlawfully held in Bondage, and for improving the Condition of the African Race, 1775-1865"; Margaret Hope Bacon, "The Pennsylvania Abolition Society's Mission for Black Education." The issue also includes a look at some of the material in the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society papers, in the PAS Papers collection at HSP, and a lesson plan and kids' page on Philadelphia's free black community.
For more information on this issue an others, see
http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=69
[As posted on H-PENNSYLVANIA by Tamara Miller, Director of Publications, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107, 215-732-6200 x208,
[email protected]]
SENECA COUNTY (NY) UNDERGROUND RAILROAD RESEARCH
Many of you will be aware of the recently completed Underground Railroad documentation project in Cayuga County, New York conducted by Judith
Wellman and her colleagues. A similar project is now begun for adjoining
Seneca County, New York. These projects have paid particularly attention to understanding the dynamics of the communities of free people and freedom seekers, both as evidence of Underground Railroad activity and as support networks for freedom seekers.
For information about the Seneca County project, contact Judith Wellman, Director, Historical New York Research Associates, and Professor Emerita, State University of New York at Oswego, Harris Hill Road, Fulton, New York 13069. 315-598-4387 or e-mail at
[email protected]
ARCHAEOLOGY IN NEW PHILADELPHIA, ILLINOIS
The following announcement was copied from H-Slavery:
From: Christopher Fennell [mailto:[email protected]]
Announcement: NEW PHILADELPHIA ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH
PROJECT: FIELD SCHOOL IN ARCHAEOLOGY AND LABORATORY TECHNIQUES, May 23,
2006 to July 28, 2006.
Sponsored by the National Science Foundation's Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program. Application Deadline: for best consideration -- March 24, 2006. Application forms and additional information are available by following the links for the New Philadelphia project on the University of Maryland's Center for Heritage Resource Studies web page, at:
http://www.heritage.umd.edu
Additional background information is available from the University of Illinois web pages, at:
http://www.anthro.uiuc.edu/faculty/cfennell/NP
Field School Objectives:
The New Philadelphia story is both compelling and unique. Many studies in historical archaeology that concentrate on African-American issues have focused on plantation life and the pre-emancipation era. The history of New Philadelphia is very different. It is a chronicle of racial uplift and centering on the success of an African-American family and their ability to survive and prosper in a racist society. In 1836, Frank McWorter, an African American who was born into slavery and later purchased his own freedom, acquired 42 acres of land in the sparsely populated area of Pike County, Illinois, situated in the rolling hills bounded by the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. He founded and platted a town, subdivided the property, and sold lots. McWorter used the revenues from his entrepreneurial efforts to purchase the freedom of sixteen family members, with a total expenditure of $14,000 - a remarkable achievement. Families of African American and European American heritage moved to the town and created a multi-racial community. New Philadelphia likely served as a stopping place for the "Underground railroad" as enslaved African Americans fled northward escaping the oppression of southern plantations.
The history of New Philadelphia serves as a rare example of a multi-racial early farming community on the nation's Midwestern frontier (Walker 1983). The town's population reached its peak of about 160 people after the Civil War, a size comparable to many Pike County communities today. However, by the end of the century racial and corporate politics of America's gilded age resulted in the death knell for the settlement: regional transportation investors routed a new railroad line to pass north of the town. Many of New Philadelphia's residents eventually moved away and, by the early 20th century, only a few families remained (Walker 1983).
This NSF-REU sites program will help enhance undergraduate education in scientific methods and analyses in an ongoing long-term project at New Philadelphia. The primary goals of the project are to:
- Understand the town's founding and development as a multi-racial integrated town;
- Explore and contrast dietary patterns between different households of different ethnic backgrounds by examining faunal and botanical remains;
- Reconstruct the townscape and town lot uses of different households from different ethnic backgrounds using botanical data and archaeological landscape features;
- Elucidate the different consumer choices residents of different ethnic backgrounds made in a frontier situation and understand how household choices changed with the increased connection to distant markets and changing perceptions of racialization within the society.
The excavation and analysis of artifacts and archaeobiology data will provide students with a hands-on learning experience and mentoring process for students in an interdisciplinary setting. Ultimately, these different data sets will be integrated and the students will gain an understanding of the importance of scientific interdisciplinary research as they examine the growth and development of the town. This research will elucidate how individual members and families of this integrated community made choices to create their immediate environment, diet, agricultural practices, social affiliation, and consumer choices.
Archaeological and Research Setting:
New Philadelphia in Pike County, Illinois is situated between the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. Today, most of the original 42 acres have been returned to agricultural use. Only a few scattered house foundations are visible in the plowed fields.
This archaeology project serves as an excellent opportunity for students to participate in many aspects of a scientific research program. Students will be divided into teams and they will work collaboratively on an assigned town lot in New Philadelphia. Prior to excavations, each student will draw from the broader research goals of this project to create an individual and focused research design to be addressed in the course of their field school experience. The field school instructors will teach students about the different archaeological theories used to formulate such research designs, and the methods, sampling, and excavation strategies used in archeology to explore those questions.
Each team will be responsible for helping to develop a research design, retrieving archaeological data (material culture and archaeobiology data), cleaning and cataloging the materials, data entry, and analyzing artifacts and archaeobiological materials from one town lot. Student teams will work closely in a mentorship situation with Illinois State Museum, Research and Collection Center (ISM-RCC), University of Illinois (UI) and University of Maryland (UM) staff in order to acquire the necessary skills to perform scientific research. Each student will "specialize" in one form of analysis and they will report on their findings at the end of the summer session. This information will allow students to work as a team to reconstruct the landscape and lifeways of residents of this historic town.
Evening lectures will be presented and the group will take several field trips to local historic sites and museums during the ten-week course.
Results:
At the end of the course student teams will make a presentation of their results. Field school staff and members of the community interested in this archaeology project will be invited to a half-day symposium to listen to and discuss the results presented by each team member. The presentation will allow for the dissemination of new information as well as group assessment and constructive critique of the work of each field school participant and the overall project. With the help of field school instructors, this presentation will introduce students to the skill of public speaking and it will help provide them the techniques for communicating scientific results to a public audience. After this presentation and discussion, student teams will assess evaluations and create a strategy on how to best present this work to other audiences. They can also provide their assessments of the priorities that should be placed on the various research goals to be pursued in ongoing historical and archaeological investigations at the New Philadelphia site.
Project Location, Facilities and Student Stipends:
All students are required to be in Pike County on May 22nd and the instructions will begin on May 23rd. New Philadelphia is about 75 miles west of Springfield, Illinois, and 25 miles east of Hannibal, Missouri. There is no mass transportation to the immediate area. The closest town is Barry, Illinois (population 1400) where students will stay at the Kinderhook Lodge. Lodging and meals will be provided during weeks 1-5 while staying in Pike County and students will be transported to the site every day. During the weekends students are free to travel and explore the region when fieldtrips are not scheduled. (The Kinderhook Lodge is located between the towns of Kinderhook and Barry on Rt. 106). During weeks 6-10 students will move to the dormitories in Springfield, Illinois and work at the ISM-RCC. This facility provides a state-of-the-art environment and it has vast collections and high quality research laboratories and offices for anthropology, botany, geology, and zoology. During the weekends students are free to travel and explore the region.
Students receive a $300 per week stipend paid on a bi-weekly basis.
Application Procedure:
Each student is required to submit an application form, transcripts from all colleges attended, two letters of recommendation, and an essay. For best consideration, the final date for receipt of all applications materials is March 24, 2006. This field school is sponsored by the National Science Foundation's Research Experiences for Undergraduates sites program, and will select students based on their scholarly ability as well as their motivation and ability to perform scholarly and scientific research. Students from underrepresented groups are encouraged to apply. Students will be notified of acceptance no later than April 14, 2006.
Christopher C. Fennell, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, 109 Davenport Hall, MC-148, 607 S. Mathews Ave., University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801; phone: (217) 244-7309 fax: (217) 244-3490
http://www.anthro.uiuc.edu/faculty/cfennell
Christopher Densmore
Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College
November 16, 2005
|
