Using USCT pension records to restore slave families
Wrapping up Black History Month with a guest post on the blog at Ancestry.com: Restoring Slave Families Using USCT Pension Records.
Continue reading →Category Archives: Milliken’s Bend
Would the real George Washington please stand up?
According to the National Park Service’s Soldiers and Sailors System, there were twenty enlisted men named George Washington in the 5th U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery. These all would have been black men, the vast majority, former slaves. The 5th U.S. … Continue reading →
Tim O’Brien & Milliken’s Bend
A line from Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is the very first sentence in my book: “‘The only certainty is overwhelming ambiguity,’ writes Tim O’Brien in his Vietnam War classic, The Things They Carried. He could have been writing … Continue reading →
Chaos of Emancipation
Special guest post today at National Archives blog, “Rediscovering Black History” about the Chaos of Emancipation in northeast Louisiana, 1863. Much thanks to Tina Ligon and others for making this possible!
Continue reading →Slave takes his master prisoner (or does he?)
A recent post included a brief anecdote about a former slave – now a Union soldier – taking his former master prisoner at Milliken’s Bend. This story was widely repeated (after all, it made sensational journalism) – but it was … Continue reading →