Dear subscribers to VA-HIST:

Although only recently re-subscribed to the list, I find now that
when I previously subscribed in 1998 I posted a plea for help in
a major project which is still, three years later, in progress.
In the hope that in the intervening years relevant documents may
have newly come to the eyes of subscribers, I am repeating the
query, slightly brought up-to-date:

****
I have been working for several years on a project involving the
African Americans who took their freedom in the course of the War
of 1812, who included a fair proportion of Black Virginians. In
addition to looking at details of governement actions and
policies and military and naval actions, I am also investigating
_all_ the individuals themselves, trying to match names in
American documents against names in British documents.

From various archives I have collected eye-witness statements of
slaves' departure: some simple, others
complicated, occasionally comic or tragic. One of the reasons I
have joined this list is to ask whether anyone involved in
Virginia history or genealogy has come across accounts of the War
of 1812 in family records or other local records, particularly
accounts of the events as they affected households and their
deserting slaves. And perhaps people could point me towards
relevant local archives in Virginia? I live in the UK but have
the opportunity from time to time of visiting the Chesapeake.

If anyone would like to know more about my research, there is an
article in the journal IMMIGRANTS AND MINORITIES volume 15 no.1
(April 1996): John McNish Weiss, "The Corps of Colonial Marines
1814-16: a summary". There is also a much more recent account,
though focussed mainly on those of the refugees who finished up
in Trinidad, at the following temporary website:
http://freespace.virgin.net.john.weiss/Trinidad.htm .

***
I received some useful information following my original posting,
and I thank again anyone who remembers corresponding with me; and
as the pace of document discovery quickens, and the membership of
this list grows, it seems to me that three years is not too short
a time for posting my request once more.

John Weiss
Independent Scholar
London, UK




  or I can e-mail something more recent, a transcript of a paper
I read last
week on the project to the British Association for American
Studies.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

[log in to unmask]
-------------------------------------
Researching the four thousand black Americans
who took their freedom in the War of 1812

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