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Project Details
After "Shoemaker Will", the second most frequently enslaved individual in the Mount Vernon Ledger 1794-1796 was an enslaved carpenter named Isaac. Investigating Isaac's story using the Financial Papers Project site and the Papers of George Washington index revealed a greater story of a family divided across the lines of freedom and slavery, distance and mobility. To present the narrative of Isaac's family, I used an interactive family tree, initially developed by Erica Cavanaugh, and visual information representation through Canva, which created an accessible and coherent expanded understanding of the lives of an enslaved family.
Subjects or Themes
Slavery--America--History--18th century.
Project Language(s)
English
Time Period
Geographic Location
Project Categories
Content Type
Images, Graphs, Text, Visualizations, Interactive Web Graph
Target Audience(s)
Creators
Madeline Pannell
Year(s)
2020-2021
Host Institution / Affiliation / Project Location
The Washington Papers
Software Employed
Labor and Support
I started with the basis of transcription and textual/data analysis I curated for an earlier project on William Lee's life to identify Isaac's workload. Next, I did further research to more fully capture the archival record of Isaac's life, including his family and every detail about their lives recorded, which took roughly a month. I spent the successive months developing the narrative of Isaac and Kitty's family, assembling my research into coherent sections and graphic visualizations. During this time, I also wrote the file for Isaac and Kitty's interactive family tree. Finally, I gathered all of the information and analysis into the StoryMap and wrote accompanying prose. My research for the project began in August 2020, and I completed the project in February 2021: a total of six months start to finish.