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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