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Project Details
Last Seen is recovering the stories of families separated in the domestic slave trade. Formerly enslaved people placed these ads hoping to reconnect with family and loved ones for decades following emancipation. These ads serve as testaments to their enduring hope and determination to regain what was taken from them. You can search the thousands of Information Wanted ads collected here to look for your ancestors, participate in our project by transcribing ads, or discover resources and materials to use in your classroom.
Subjects or Themes
African American
Project Language(s)
English
Time Period
Geographic Location
Project Categories
Target Audience(s)
Creators
Judith Giesberg
Year(s)
2017
Host Institution / Affiliation / Project Location
Villanova University
Software Employed
Labor and Support
The project has been built, largely via the support of stipended-graduate students, 14 hours a week, since fall 2016. Transcriptions are completed by unpaid volunteers.
Project Cost
Partnerships, funding sources, or grant-funding acknowledgement
National Historical Publications & Records Commission of the National Archives; Villanova University’s Department of History, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest, the Schretter Emerging Faculty Scholars Endowed Fund, and the Lore Kephart '86 Distinguished Historians Lecture Series Fund; and Pennsylvania Abolition Society.