I’m happy to share that my interview with Bernice Bennett on her podcast, Ancestor’s Footsteps will be on air, tomorrow, March 24 on Spreaker– the link is below.
In “Moses Williams, his Family & Gradual Emancipation. ” I offer a brief overview of what I learned about the Williams family in Philadelphia in the Early National period, based on my journal article, “Not Yet Completely Free” in the Winter v. 43 issue of the AAHGS Journal.
Bernice’s new podcast is a wonderful source, where you can listen to her & her guests discuss a wide range of historical and contemporary topics, so be sure to tune in!
So happy to announce i’ll be talking about my recent publication in the Winter 2025 issue of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society Journal, “Not Yet Completely Free: Gradual Emancipation and the Family of Moses Williams, 1776-1833.”
I’ll discuss the 1780 Gradual Emancipation Act in Philadelphia, part of the lesser known history of Northern slavery. By tracing the family histories connected to the silhouette artist and museum artisan and assistant Moses Williams (1776-ca 1833) one can catch sight of the challenges experienced by African descended and multiethnic Free People of Color in their emancipation process in this city. Williams was among the children of John and Phylis Williams, a couple held in bondage until 1786. He worked in the Philadelphia Museum of Charles Willson Peale from his childhood to adulthood and was manumitted about 1802.
Shamele Jordon will present on the heritage of Green Book locations in New Jersey, and Mary Belcher and Guy Weston will discuss recovery and reclamation of Black cemeteries in Washington DC and Flushing New York.
Silhouette of Moses Williams, Cutter of Profiles, 1802. Library Company of Philadelphia
So happy to share that “Not Yet Completely Free: Gradual Emancipation and the Family of Moses Williams, Philadelphia 1776-1833. ” is in the latest issue of the AAHGS Journal!
Volume 43 Winter Edition of the AAHGS Journal is available via Amazon. Editor Guy Oreido Weston brought together articles that span several states. The issue delves into family and local histories, the recovery and reclamation of Black cemeteries in Washington DC and New York.
Not Yet Completely Free: Gradual Emancipation and the Family of Moses Williams, Philadelphia 1776-1833.
Moses Williams is a paradigmatic figure for the 250th Anniversary of the founding of our country. Born into slavery in 1776, and eventually freed by 1803 under the terms of the 1780 Gradual Emancipation Act, Williams was the first Black museum professional. For a time, he owned property and a house at 10 Sterling Alley; he had a wife and at least four children. Raised in the museum, in proximity to the Peale children, Williams learned how to read, how to prepare birds and other animals for displays. Eventually he cut silhouettes there using a patented machine. In 1810, he considered his role important enough to tell the census enumerator that he ‘attended at the Museum’.
Now in 2025, an amazing group of historians, curators, writers and artists from different institutions & independent professionals are focusing on Williams’ life and craft. This is a sea change from the shock I experienced listening to an exasperated curator ask why look at him? in the midst of the Peale exhibition touring nationally some two decades ago. I published my first article in Museum Anthropology detailing what I learned about Williams, who also figured in my dissertation. This built on then-current Peale scholarship on the audience for Peale’s Museum. Black history did not figure into the history of museums, even though to function, some institutions were dependent on the labor of enslaved and indentured persons. Similar to Monticello, the Peale project suffered from a segregated history that has changed since the late 1990s.
Since then, Williams has been recognized as an artist and artisan in his own right, part of a growing community through exhibitions organized by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw and other scholars. There is also an initiative by Faye Anderson, Director of All That Philly Jazz; she also serves on the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, and plans to have him remembered with a historical marker where his former home stood, to be featured in future walking tours of the city.
Williams is a historical figure I can relate to. He knew a lot about many things, was literate and skilled with his hands. When I went to museums I found myself connecting to the people who worked there cleaning, protecting and maintaining the collections, and so I see him as a kindred spirit, an ancestor who deserves to be taken seriously. To see the constructed nature of the display, its arrangement, the acquisitions taken as booty in wartime, silenced behind display labels shows the larger threads that colonization wove to establish particular kinds of truth. There was a silencing or veiling of the destruction of Native settlements and the genocide that accompanied these early campaigns, also tied to an economy built on the backs of enslaved people. Despite these challenges, Williams’ presence is there, part of a larger story of this nation.
Beyond the display were questions of family. Even with what was reconstructed and recently discovered, there remain questions and the hope of finding more fragments to pull together. I’m part of a group that shares these new finds. Public historian Dean Krimmel working with The Peale found a probate file showing that he died 18 December 1830; of three daughters, two, Louise and Sarah are named, his son Carl became Charles. Now we know he had four children with Maria– whose surname remains unknown. The likelihood of finding descendants today increases with these additional names.
Descendants of John & Phillis Williams- The Williams Family Tree
But back to Williams and his family. Their experiences resonate, as they lived under the threat of kidnapping and forced deportation, the result of the constitutional amendment passed in 1793– the Fugitive Slave Act. They did everything to insure their family’s survival, even if that meant separation by indenture. My research uses details from the Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers, church records, the Peale Papers, newspaper accounts, census records and other items to reconstruct two generations of the Williams family. My hope is that this reconstruction makes it possible for descendants to connect.
Hope, resilience and faith in a better future drove their choices. To face the future despite the challenges is what defines the Williams’ family history.
Tonight i’m happy to share that ‘ll be participating in the AAHGS Journal’s Author Forum– with Kevin McGruder, Myrtle Thierry Palmer and Guy Weston, from 7-9PM this evening. The event recording will be available later for members to view in case you can’t make the live event.
I’ll provide an overview of “Searching for Lorenzo Ubiles, Alcalde de Barrio, Humacao, 1873” based on my previous Ubiles blogpost. Delighted at the geographic spread that each of us covers, from Louisiana to Philadelphia to New Jersey and Puerto Rico.
Thrilled to announce that my presentation proposal, “Not Yet Completely Free: Gradual Emancipation and the Family of Moses Williams, Philadelphia, 1776-1833.” was accepted for the 45th AAHGS National Conference this October! Appreciate the opportunity to share, learn and contact other genealogists and family historians at this wonderful event, hosted by AAHGS President LaJoy Mosby.
The conference theme is “Fighting Erasure: Staying Visible by Keeping African American Genealogy and History in Focus.” This centers on the “role of preserving and spotlighting African American history and genealogy in the broader narrative of American history.”
Silhouette of “Moses Williams, Cutter of Profiles, 1802″Library Company of Philadelphia.
Here’s my abstract for my presentation, “Not Yet Completely Free: Gradual Emancipation and the Family of Moses Williams, Philadelphia, 1776-1833.” :
When the word slavery comes to mind, many think of the US South, rather than the Northern states. Northern slavery’s history is less well known, particularly in states with gradual emancipation—Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. This presentation focuses on the family histories tied to the silhouette artist and museum artisan Moses Williams (1776-ca 1833), to glimpse African descended, Free People of Color and the challenges faced in their process of emancipation. The reality of bondage challenges the image of Philadelphia, a city so closely identified with national freedom. Important clues for Moses Williams and his family are contained in archives that includes the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, and records for his former enslaver, the Maryland-born portrait painter and Philadelphia-museum owner Charles Willson Peale (1746-1823). Peale held Williams’ parents between 1776-1786, and freed Williams in 1803. Most archival material on the Williams family is excavated from the Papers of the Peale Family, newspapers, deeds & census records. While the origins of Williams parents remain a question, records suggest the situations that Free Black Philadelphians contended with under the 1780 act for Gradual Abolition. Freedom was negotiated and paid for with terms of service at a tender age. This case study shows how the increased availability of digitized records and community research helps restore the experiences of free Black families to a larger historical narrative.
My deep thanks to Nancy Proctor and Dean Krimmel of The Peale Baltimore, who have invited me to share my work on Moses Williams, who now has a museum space and internship program named after him; and to Carol Soltis, of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, who is currently studying Williams’ technique and style for the profiles he produced, that numbered nearly nine thousand. Williams’ family members experienced degrees of unfreedom in different ways, and I seek to acknowledge their resilience by considering the ways they sought freedom at the cusp of the nineteenth century.
The idea of a cemetery often brings with it a belief in permanence. The emotional, physical and community efforts to commemorate ancestors can collide with the sobering reality of what happens when these sites of memory are lost, forgotten or erased by larger forces set in play by Jim Crow. These erasures wipe away the human traces of a former world built with a difficult history that extends to the Post-Emancipation period.
Myrtle Hill Cemetery & Spanish Park East Cemetery in maps. What lies beneath, USF, Dec 2023
Overbuilt & Conveniently Forgotten
During the time I have lived here, several rediscovered burial grounds beneath high schools and housing complexes appeared in the pages of the Tampa Bay Times, awakening the grief of many over the unmarked graves. In 2019 the bodies of ancestors buried in the Zion Cemetery and Ridgewood Cemetery emerged as recent examples of a history of segregation literally buried in the rush to develop areas of Tampa. Ground penetrating radar found 145 of the original 270 burials from the former Ridgewood cemetery that year, nearly all of them Black.[1] Redlining was the motor for such outcomes.
Museum Studies: Race, Memorialization & the Museum
Over forty cemeteries and burial grounds were identified in the study undertaken by Dr. Kimmerle and her Ph.D. candidate Kelsee Hentschel-Fey, along with GIS Manager Benjamin Mittler, and Dr. Lori Collins of the USF Center for Digital Heritage and Geospatial Information. Students in Dr. Kimmerle’s museum studies class “Race, Memorialization and the Museum” produced the exhibition.
“The exhibit offers a unique view into the history of the area told through the lens of its cemeteries, utilizing historic and modern photographs, archival documents and maps depicting the approximate locations of newly re-discovered burial grounds, and mixed media sculptures to help convey the story of the buried past. “
Memory Jug, Caitlin Figueroa. Mixed media.
Images of the Exhibit: December 2023
This fascinating show was created by several scholars who came together in a multi-year interdisciplinary investigation into unmarked burial grounds in Hillsborough County, Florida. As one walks through the exhibit, the layers of information ultimately defy anonymity, and offers proof of a history told by those who lie beneath the city. To end on the Dozier School for Boys was a powerful note. Here are some of my fotos of the show, that lend an idea of the content.
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Why this Show Matters
Given the history of this state and the current efforts to obscure Black and Indigenous histories, this exhibit matters.
There remains a profound need for a followup exhibition covering the continued efforts on memorialization by various local and descendant communities as additional sites come to light.
[1] Paul Guzzo, “NAACP wants reparations for Tampa’s Black cemeteries that government “stole”. Tampa Bay times 27 Feb 2023
See collection of articles on the Tampa Bay Times website:
In search of lost cemeteriesA number of cemeteries forgotten through the years across the Tampa Bay area came to light during 2019, most of them final resting places for African-Americans. The new attention to old burial grounds springs from a Tampa Bay Times report in June that revealed the first and largest of them – Zion Cemetery in Tampa.
This has turned out to be a busy month! I finished my last article for the series on “Reconstructing Missing Volume of the Registro Central de Esclavos, pt 4” for the forthcoming volume 24 of Hereditas: Revista de la Sociedad Puertorriquena de Genealogia. I hope to submit “Looking for Lorenzo Ubiles, Alcalde de barrio Humacao 1873.” for the AAHGS Journal shortly.
I’m happy to announce that on Thursday October 19, 1:30 PM-2:30 EST, I’ll be presenting “El Registro de Esclavos: An archive you need to know”, at “Hidden in Plain Sight: Recovering the erased stories of our ancestors in the United States and the Caribbean”, the 44th Annual 2023 AAHGS Virtual Conference. Excited to be among so many great presentations & presenters that includes friends & family from Black ProGen Live! Sessions will be available until Dec 31.
Here’s the description: The process of emancipation in Puerto Rico formally began in 1868, with the registration of over 30,000 enslaved persons using cedulas, small registration forms 6 x 8” in size. The information on these forms were copied to create the volumes of the Registro de Esclavos, issued in 1872. FamilySearch microfilmed two series of these documents from the enormous collection of Gobiernos Españoles collection. These are now searchable on the FamilySearch site as “Puerto Rico Slave Registers, 1863-1879”. These entries shed light on the identities of people as they transitioned to freedom just fifteen years before the establishment of the Registro Civil (Civil Registration) in 1885 and the formal end of slavery in 1886. The information covers name, origin, parents, partner, children, enslaver, physical details and issues around the purchase of freedom, manumission, or even the death of the person listed. The ages range from days old to persons in their 80s. These documents are useful for identifying family members and confirming their identities and locations pre-1885, and who may not appear in the 1910 census. Recently digitized archives on the Archivo Digital Nacional de Puerto Rico (ADNPR.net) that overlap with the information in the Registro de Esclavos will be covered. This work is a contribution to the ancestors, to help bridge them with their descendants.
Yesterday evening, the Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project (MPCPMP) hosted Antonio Rocha’s performance of “Voyage through Death to Life upon these Shores”: The Malaga Speaks. Here’s the description of the program, which will soon be on YouTube:
The story of the Malaga, a 19th century ship built in Maine that transported captive Africans, was created and will be performed by Antonio Rocha. Told from the perspective of the ship, Rocha uses song, narration, and mime to weave his way through this historical tale that chronicles the history of the trans-Atlantic human trade and its legacy. Annually, on August 23rd, the Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project (MPCPMP) hosts a program to acknowledge this day and the lives of those captive Africans who perished during the trans-Atlantic crossing known as the Middle Passage and the ten million who survived to build the Americas. Through the presentation of this creative work, The Malaga Speaks, MPCPMP offers a broader narrative of connection and the Diaspora – from ship building, to the ocean voyage, to arrival, into enslavement; from Maine, to Africa, across the Atlantic, to Brazil.
Rocha’s performance is a powerful one. He builds and weaves a narrative that reveal layers of history and experiences of the Middle Passage as a knowledge that is both painful and liberatory the deeper he enters into the story of the Malaga. There is a body memory, a visceral space where those who survive decide what they can carry, and what was left by the ancestors for us today.
