Their Own Voices

Their Own Voices PDF

Author: Winston Adler

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2011-07-01

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 9781463648923

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Beginning in the 1840s and continuing until his death, Dr. Asa Fitch (1809-1878) of Salem, NY, interviewed elderly neighbors, questioning them about the time of first European settlement, the Revolutionary War, and the first decades of the 19th century. Fitch was more than just a medical doctor. By the 1850s, he ranked as a world-famed entomologist, with important discoveries about insect life to his credit. He turned his precise, scientific mindset to good account in his oral history work. He seems to have functioned almost like a human tape recorder, transcribing and preserving vivid, colloquial statements from a wide range of individuals---most not fully literate people (that is, people who could read their Bible and sign their names but not write fluent accounts of the incidents of their lives.) Jeanne Winston Adler's excerpts from Fitch's manuscript ("Notes for a History of Washington County, NY," NY Genealogical & Biographical Soc., NYC; and elsewhere on microfilm) present the liveliest "voices" collected by the 19th-century scholar. Some portions of Adler's "Their Own Voices" (first published in 1983) were re-published in her "In the Path of War: Children of the American Revolution Tell Their Stories" (Cobblestone Publishing, 1998). A facsimile reprint of the 1983 book, containing all material originally excerpted from Fitch, is now offered here.

Washington County Chronicles

Washington County Chronicles PDF

Author: Harriet Branton

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2013-03-05

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1614238855

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Abolitionists, rebels and innovators have all tracked across the pages of Washington County history. Their stories and more were chronicled by beloved local historian Harriet Branton, who introduced readers of the "Washington Observer-Reporter "to the history hidden in plain sight. In the earliest tales, European settlers clashed with the Shawanese and Delaware Indians, and fiery local lawyer" "David Bradford led the Whiskey Rebellion. With the coming of the Civil War, the people of southwestern Pennsylvania overwhelmingly united to the cause of the Union--the LeMoynes of Washington and the McKeevers of West Middletown shepherded slaves to freedom, and Washington and Jefferson College sent its alumni to the key battles of the war. Join Branton as she journeys from the rough-and-tumble frontier days of Washington County to the twentieth century ushered in by coal, oil and iron rail.

The Mysterious Black Migration 1800-1820

The Mysterious Black Migration 1800-1820 PDF

Author: L. Lloyd Stewart

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2013-01-22

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1479771929

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The story that unfolds in this work manifests the pursuit of one of the many historical mysteries that plague the early history of people of African descent in New York State - a mass migration of thousands of African descendants to Washington County, New York at the turn of the 19th century. The impact of this de-valued history and its absence from the historical record has distorted the recollection and remembrance of people of African descent in New York, whose ancestors were trapped in the confinement of enslavement and second-class citizenship. This unrecorded migration transpired while New York was beginning to alter its highly profitable economic system from an enslavement-based economy to a more capitalist system of production. They journeyed to Washington County, families and expectations in tow under the suggestion of a rumor of opportunity and anticipation that a better life was possible for them at the end of this arduous journey. Newly disposed of the day to day dehumanizing nature of enslavement, they struggled to find a more sustainable, prosperous and humane way of life. The correlation between my family, the Van Vrankens and the thousands of other individuals of African descent who migrated to Washington County during this period, is the personal, festering wound of omission that is still not healed or resolved. This work is a continuing byproduct of genealogical research begun by the author in 2000. It represents the second in a series of books relating to his families experiences in early New York. The first Book A Far Cry From Freedom: Gradual Abolition (1799-1827) New York States Crime Against Humanity, was published in 2006.

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