Just heard yesterday of this new publication:





> The Archeological Society of Virginia (ASV) is pleased to announce the latest addition to its Special Publication Series.



> Twin Paths to Freedom: The History and Archaeology 

> of James City County’s Free Black Communities

> - by Martha W. McCartney. 



> OVERVIEW:

> During the first half of the nineteenth century, there were two Free Black settlements in James City County: one that was purposefully established and another whose formation was happenstance. These two communities’ origins and their inhabitants’ personal histories provide unique insights into the life experience of Virginia’s Free Blacks. Among the issues discussed are household composition, employment, living conditions, material culture, family stability, and social mobility.

> The volume includes a succinct review of the laws that governed Africans’ and African Americans’ everyday lives, which serves as a backdrop for the main narrative. The research of social historians, archaeologists, architectural historians, and experts in the field of material culture is used to recreate the world in which nineteenth century Free Blacks lived.





> ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

> Martha W. McCartney is an American research historian and writer.

> McCartney is a William & Mary graduate. She worked for thirteen years at the Virginia Research Center for Archaeology, researching and excavating archaeological sites in Virginia. Since 1986 she has worked as an independent historian. She is also a consultant for the 

> Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and was project historian for the five-year Jamestown Archaeological Assessment conducted by the 

> National Park Service. 

> Her books include James City County: Keystone of the Commonwealth (1997), The History of Green Spring Plantation (1998), The Free Black Community at Centerville (2000), Jamestown: An American Legacy (2001), which won the 2004 National Park Service Excellence in Interpretive Media award in the Cultural Book Category, With Reverence for the Past: Gloucester County, Virginia (2001), Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers 1607–1635: A Biographical Dictionary (2007), Jordan's Point, Virginia: Archaeology in Perspective, Prehistoric to Modern Times (2011), and Mathews County, Virginia: Lost Landscapes, Untold Stories (2015).

> McCartney has won historic preservation awards, including a National History Award from the Daughters of the American Revolution in 2001.

> 







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Terry L.. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, Emeritus, The College of William and Mary, in Virginia, Williamsburg  23187     



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Have we got a college?  Have we got a football team?....Well, we can't afford both.   Tomorrow we start tearing down the college.                 --Groucho Marx, in "Horse Feathers."





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