African Roots Podcast Episode #255 February 21, 2014

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Welcome back to the African Roots Podcast! You can reach me at AfricanRootsPodcast@gmail.com

Well I have news this week both from the international arena as well as the national arena.

St. Louis Conference Brochure

 First a shout out to friends in St. Louis! The St. Louis African American Genealogy & History Society is having their fifth annual conference. Their presenters are Drusilla Pair, Linda Bugg-Simms, Konnetta Alexander, and Dr. Edward Bailey. Their conference theme is Digging up Your Roots and it promises to be a great program. The conference occurs at Harris -Stowe State University in mid-town St. Louis. The program is all day from 8:30 – 4:00 pm.

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==================================================================== INTERNATIONAL NEWS!!

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BRITISH SLAVE OWNER INFORMATION NOW AVAILABLE!

 

The University College London has compiled a database of British slave owners and this information has been digitized and is now online! This is a searchable database with more than 46,000 claims made by slave holders who were going to lose money when Britain outlawed slavery in 1833.
The total value of the claims was about £20 million, and this was considered to be an extremely large 19th century bailout by the British government. The website hosting the database is called Legacies of British Slave Ownership and it contains a wealth of background information. So by all means explore the database if you have ancestors from the British West Indies.

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LIBERIA–Liberia – An Early Census of Monrovia Liberia Now on Family Search
Many who have stories of relatives who left America and returned to Africa will find this to be good news. Family Search has started a small but important census collection for the settlement of Monrovia in the colony of Liberia. The information found in the census includes the name, age, date of arrival, relatives in the colony, profession, education and so much more. This collection can be searched by name.  So explore the  Monrovia 1843 census . 

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NATIONAL NEWS

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Payment Card For Sephus Bass, Pvt, 111th US Colored Infantry

Civil War Pension Payment Cards Now Available  – The digitization of  80% of their collection of US Veteran Administration Pension Payment Cards for the period 1907 to 1933 has now been uploaded. Now many of the records in this collection were for pension payments made to widows as well. I was thrilled to find payment records of my 2nd gr. uncle Sephus Bass, as well as payments made to others whom I research as well. The info is brief, but I still think significant. Especially if you wonder how many payments your ancestor actually received. Well now  you can find out! So take a look at this fascination collection.

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New Illinois Marriage Records Available 

Ok Illinois researchers—-some new marriage records for you! FamilySearch has added 703,000 indexed records to their existing collection of county marriages from Illinois. These marriages span the years 1810 to 1934.  This is searchable and if you have ancestors who were in that state, you might have some success in locating additional data. Illinois Marriages 1810-1934. 

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Additional WWI Draft Cards now available.
Additional Draft Cards are now available through Family Search. Apparently 2 million names have been added to the existing WWI Draft Cards that are available. Also it would be beneficial to learn more about the various times that the Draft was done. Many assume that all African American draft cards were cut in the bottom left corner. That is actully not the case. The first draft in 1917 had the corner removed, but afterwards the cards were not marked that way. So revisit the enhanced Draft Card Collection.
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FROM THE STATE ARCHIVES:

Special Digitization Reflects South Carolina Populations The College of Charleston has annonced The Lowcountry Digital History Initiative (LDHI) which launched on February. This initiative is hosted by the Lowcountry Digital Library at the College of Charleston and is funded through grants from the Humanities Council of South Carolina and the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation.

 

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North Carolina

FROM NORTH CAROLINA, Rosenwald Fund Papers Have Been Digitized!

The North Carolina Archives recently announced this week that they have added the Division of Negro Education to the African American Education Collection. These are the papers of the Supervisor of the Rosenwald Fun. Now Rosenwald Schools are found throughout the south, and it is exciting that the papers have been digitized. Booker T. Washington approached Julius Rosenwald in 1912, and by 1932, over 5,000 new school building  had been built in more than 883 counties throughout the South. More information can be found here.

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Local Level—Central Maryland chapter of AAHGS is having their Brick Wall session tomorrow in Columbia MD at the Owen Brown Center. They will have 3 presenters, Aaron Dorsey, Alice Miller and Robyn Smith who will  present case studies. They will meet tomorrow February 22 at the Owen Brown Community Center in Columbia at 1pm.

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Well spring almost approaches and this is the time to plan for spring and summer, and note MAAGI Registration is open and there are some Scholarship opportunities for summer 2014.

MAAGI SCHOLARSHIP INFORMATION

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Bernice Bennett’s show will be rescheduled.  Last night’s show had some technical problems and will have to be rescheduled. This is the radio drama with Drusilla Pair and Ajena Rogers, and the play “Flight to Freedom”. Bernice’s show airs every Thursday evening at 9 pm EST on Blog Talk Radio.

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Well thanks everyone for listening, and remember to keep researching, keep documenting and keep sharing what you find.

Posted by Angela Y. Walton-Raji

Author, lecturer and researcher. Author, "Black Indian Genealogy Research, An Expanded Edition". Editor, Voices of Indian Territory. Member AAHGS -Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society. PAAC-Preservation of African American Cemeteries. Founding Member of AfriGeneas. Faculty member for Samford IGHR, MAAGI-Midwest African American Genealogy Institute.

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