Welcome to Part 2 of Freedman Friday’s Story Telling time……this is the story of a search that I made for what I thought was one, Elsie Stevenson.
In 2017 I decided to participate in a 52 week project to document 52 Freedmen Families from Indian Territory in 52 weeks. This year-long effort was demanding but I enjoyed studying these families from pre-Oklahoma Freedman communities. One of the more fascinating families over the years have always stood out to me, because I have often come across families with the surname Stevenson, and many if not most of them all stemmed from someone called Elsie Stevenson.
This clan of families from the Chickasaw Nation, had to have been a sizeable clan as there were so many families of Stevensons that I would see. So among the many families that I undertook, was that of the Stevenson clan. The question arose for me—could I really analyze and document the Stevenson clan, and could Elsie have been the matriarch of all of them?
Well, I began the study of the Stevenson clan, and learned that this family was not one, but a cluster of multiple families, based in the same area, but with unique backgrounds. I wrote a full blog post about this on December 7, 2017.
But I thought I would tell the story here on this podcast for listeners who may not be familiar with my blog. This was my effort to find the story of Elsie Stevenson, or as it turned out to be—the 4 Elsies!
The documents that I found I am sharing here.
#1 Mack Stevenson and Family
Chickasaw Freedman Card #192
Back of Card, revealing Elsie as mother of the children
#2 Elsie Stevenson (Bynum)Chickasaw Freedman Card #586
#3 Elsie Stevenson wife of Louis Stevenson
A More Complicated Part of the Story–A Choctaw Elsie Stevenson
The story of the family that descends from this Elsie is well documented on a fascinating website called: Our Shared Family History
This cluster of Stevenson families intermarried with other larger Freedman family clans. The Colbers, Cochrants, Kemps, Wrights and others share the same history, legacy and remarkable story of survival in the Chickasaw Nation. The journey to document them was truly amazing, and their legacy continues to this day.