Alabama Genealogy in Color

Below is a transcription of a letter found in The African Repository, the journal of the American Colonization Society. This was one of many sample letters to the ACS requesting transportation to Liberia. 

Eufaula, Ala., December 25, 1867.

We, the undersigned, colored people, take this method to inform you that we would like to embark in may, 1868, for Liberia, if we can be accommodated.  We request that you furnish us with free transportation from this place to Liberia.  We are all poor, and have not any money.

A E. Williams

and two hundred others, with their families.

I ordered a copy of the letter from the microfilm owned by the  Manuscript division of the Library of Congress.  The letter has additional information not contained in The African Repository.  This transcription will be the subject of another blog.

Source: American Colonization Society, The African Repository, {Washington: Colonization Society Building, 1868).  Volume XLIV-1868:121: digital image, Google Book Search, (http://books.google.com/books?as_brr=1&id=ZDUfaNo7HOgC&vid=LCCN05039691&dq=eufaula+alabama&jtp=178 :accessed 19 July 2006)

   Notwithstanding that many of the Southern negroes who went North last winter, literally “caught fits” in the cold climate, and many died of pneumonia and other ailments, still some in the South are yet inclined to leave the only place where they will ever be treated kindly, and go North.  It was last Saturday that one or two Alabama counties reported that “labor agents” had worked up crowds of negroes who would go North as soon as those agents came with the transportation and “other inducements”  but read here a report which came out from Atlanta on the same date.

   The exodus of negroes from the south to the northern cities, where they have been lured by immigration agents holding out false promises of high wages and social equality with white people, seems to have reached the high water mark and is now receding, with a backswing of negroes, toward the south.  But hundreds of the poor victims will never return and extremely pitiful reports come from the chairity and social service organizations in northern cities, telling of the suffering and hardships endured by southern negroes who went from the warm climate of their native land to the bitter winter of the north.  The accounts of these hardships told by negroes who have been so fortunate as to get back to the south will probably do more than anything else to stop the northern exodus.

Union Springs Herald, 1917

In 1992 if anyone had told me that I would spend the next thirteen years on an ancestral journey I would have laughed at them. Like everyone else in
America, I too had watched the 1976 movie Roots by Alex Haley. The movie caused me to experience many different emotions; however, none of them ignited a desire to follow in the footsteps of Mr. Haley. As a matter of fact, I probably did not think it was a possibility for the average person. 

I’m not sure what it is about one’s personality that draws them to the art of genealogy and family research because it can be tedious, discouraging, dirty and expensive.  However, it can also be full of surprises and very rewarding. Whatever the reason, there is a very strong desire to discover who your ancestors were and to share information about them that no one else knows.  You begin to wonder if you look like any of them, did you pick up any of their personalities or skills, and what were their lives like during their lifetimes.  Read the rest of this entry »

On 14 May 1868 the ship Golconda set sail from Savannah, Georgia.  Onboard were 39 Eufaula residents heading for Bexley, Grand Bassa County, Liberia.   According to letters received by the American Colonization Society (ACS), there were hundreds of African Americans from the Eufaula area requesting passage to Africa.  Below is a transcribed list of Eufaula emigrants originally published by the ACS in The African Repository. Read the rest of this entry »