COLUMBUS, Miss. – Christian Friar, a senior history major at Mississippi University for Women, is documenting runaway slave advertisements from Mississippi and Alabama pre-Civil War at the Columbus Lowndes Public Library this summer.
“Friar is poring over the more than twenty pre-1865 county newspapers both on microfilm and in hard-copy format. She is creating a transcription of the advertisements text as well as capturing a scanned digital image of each entry,” said Mona Vance, Archivist in the Local History Department at Columbus-Lowndes Public Library.
The local project is in conjunction with a larger research project called “Documenting Runaway Slaves” at the University of Southern Mississippi. MUW is collaborating to help document newspaper advertisements placed by slave masters seeking the capture and return of runaway slaves.
“I came across a very interesting advertisement for a runaway slave. As it turns out, the slave was actually stolen from Georgia and brought to Lowndes County,” said Friar. She added, “Another slave ran away after allegedly killing his master’s wife, but was later captured.”
“This study is important to help build the knowledge of African American history for this area,” said Vance.
According to Friar, “This project is important because it sheds more light not only on an important topic such as slavery, but how society was at that time.”
A blog post at the library archives stated: “Runaway slave advertisements personalize history, providing important clues about the lives of slaves, their efforts at self-emancipation, and the viewpoints of their masters. The ads often include first and last names of the slaves and their masters, where they lived, ages, and names of the current and previous slaveholder. They sometimes also include reasons why the slave fled, possible destinations, clothing, special skills or talents, and personality features.”
The project will gather these documents and organize them into a full-text searchable online resource for academic researchers, genealogists and anyone who wants to learn more about this time period.
“I have learned a lot on just how the newspapers viewed slavery by how they described the runaways and the articles in the papers about slavery,” added Friar.
For more information contact Chris Friar by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 26, 2013
Contact: Janie Guyton Shields
(662) 329-7119
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