This is some of the best news that I have heard of in a long time.  Hi Anita.  Jane.

-----Original Message-----
>From: Anita Wills <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Oct 7, 2008 2:58 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] VCDH Launches Virginia Emigrants to Liberia Website
>
>Codos to those who worked so hard on this project. The database is an excellent resource, and easy to maneuver. 
>
>It would be nice to see a database on the free blacks that settled in Nova Scotia. I located many Lewis and Bowden settlers (from Virginia), whose communities still exist today. William F. Buckley Senior did a photo archive of the blacks in Nova Scotia. I was able to view the photographs through the Nova Scotia Libraries website. Buckley was certainly a talented photographer and captured the essence of this community. 
>
>Anita   
>
>> Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2008 10:33:40 -0400
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: VCDH Launches Virginia Emigrants to Liberia Website
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> 
>> [FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE]
>> 
>> VCDH Announces Official Launch of Virginia Emigrants To Liberia Website
>> 
>> http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/liberia
>> 
>> Charlottesville, Virginia, Oct. 1, 2008: Virginia Emigrants to Liberia, a
>> new website directed by scholars affiliated with the Virginia Center for
>> Digital History (VCDH) at the University of Virginia, opens a window into
>> the lives of free black and enslaved Virginians, the trans-Atlantic world
>> they inhabited, and the African nation they helped to found.
>> 
>> Between 1820 and 1865, some 3,700 African Americans left Virginia for
>> Liberia, the West African settlement founded by the American Colonization
>> Society (ACS).  About one-quarter of these emigrants were free blacks, the
>> rest newly manumitted slaves, most freed upon the condition of their
>> voluntary resettlement in the ACS-governed colony (1820-1847) and
>> independent black republic (1847-present) across the Atlantic. More than two
>> hundred white Virginians emancipated slaves for emigration.
>> 
>> Through the Virginia Emigrants to Liberia website
>> <www.vcdh.virginia.edu/liberia>, officially launched by VCDH on October 1,
>> researchers can gather census-like information on individual emigrants from
>> a searchable database, read stories about emigrants and emancipators, and
>> easily access related online resources. The database enables historians and
>> genealogists to collect and analyze data not usually available for enslaved
>> people, such as surnames and family relationships, and connect people to
>> localities on both continents.
>> 
>> The website features a variety of resources, the heart of which is a
>> searchable database of emigrants and emancipators. The Emigrants table is
>> searchable by first and last name, place of origin in Virginia, ship,
>> emancipator, and destination in Liberia. It provides detailed shipboard
>> census information often including full names, family relationships,
>> occupation and literacy; data from the 1843 Liberian census; and additional
>> information from ACS and First African Baptist Church (Richmond) records.
>> The Emancipator table is searchable by surname, county, and year of
>> emancipation.
>> 
>> Other resources on the website include ten stories of emigrants and
>> emancipators, representing a range of experiences. For example, emigrant
>> Hilary Teage wrote the Liberian Declaration of Independence in 1847 and
>> Joseph Jenkins Roberts became the world’s first African American president.
>> Harriet Graves Waring became a reluctant founding mother, and Augustus
>> Curtis participated in the slave trade (Roberts avowed Curtis was the only
>> African American who did so) and lived among the Vai people. Patrick Bullock
>> and his family felt abandoned as they endured illness and starvation.
>> 
>> Broadly collaborative in design, the Virginia Emigrants to Liberia project
>> builds on the painstaking research of two leading historians of Virginia
>> colonization: Dr. Marie Tyler-McGraw, author of the book An African
>> Republic: Black And White Virginians In The Making Of Liberia (University of
>> North Carolina Press, 2007), and Dr. Deborah A. Lee, who has researched and
>> written on women colonizationists, the Underground Railroad, and antislavery
>> in the mid-Atlantic region.  It features as well an illustrated essay by
>> Harvard University doctoral candidate Dalila Scruggs. Scruggs analyzed
>> images produced by black settlers and white colonizationists to better
>> understand underlying cultural beliefs and how they were used to promote the
>> colonization movement in the antebellum United States.
>> 
>> The web project was funded by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and
>> the database developed in partnership with the Afro-American Historical
>> Association of Fauquier County.
>> 
>> VCDH director Scot French hailed the project as a major step toward
>> expanding public awareness of the Virginia colonization movement’s social,
>> cultural, and geopolitical dimensions, as well as a research and teaching
>> tool with great potential for development and expansion.
>> 
>> "I’m thrilled that Deborah Lee and Marie Tyler-McGraw chose to work with
>> VCDH on this project. These two scholars, working in traditional archives,
>> conducted research of enormous significance to the study of slavery,
>> freedom, race, and nationality on both sides of the Atlantic. Now, through
>> this unique website, they have made their findings widely accessible to the
>> public as searchable data, narrated stories, and scholarly essays.”
>> 
>> Now in its tenth year, the Virginia Center for Digital History is committed
>> to advancing knowledge through the application of digital technologies to
>> history and related fields of scholarly inquiry; designing and developing
>> innovative applications of technology in consultation with historians and
>> other project partners, and facilitating exchanges among educators with a
>> shared commitment to transforming how history is taught, learned and
>> accessed in the Digital Age.
>> 
>> Contact:
>> 
>> Scot A. French
>> Director / Associate Professor
>> Virginia Center for Digital History
>> http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu
>> Alderman Library ~ Taylor Room
>> P.O. Box 400116
>> University of Virginia
>> Charlottesville, VA 22904-4116
>> 434-924-3804 [ phone ]
>> 434-243-5566 [ fax ]
>> [log in to unmask]
>> 
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Lillian Jane Steele

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