2023 Archival Fellowship

As part of its 2023 grant OHRAB received funding to continue its Archival Fellowship program to locate manumission records.  The 2023 program focused on using online resources and databases, such as mid-nineteenth century census records and court records, to identify African-Americans living in the following southeast Ohio counties:  Athens, Fairfield, Gallia, Hocking, Jackson, Lawrence, Morgan, Perry and Vinton counties.  With the lists of names, for a future project OHRAB will search for the manumission records in deed books and other county records in the local repositories.   

JeMiah Baht Israel, a second year Ph.D. of History student at the University of Cincinnati with a concentration in Public History, received the 2023 fellowship.  The program ran from May 15 to July 21, 2023.  During the course of the project Baht Israel identified 2,623 African-Americans listed in the 1850 censuses for those nine counties.  In addition, 168 African-Americans in those counties were found in the Special Enumeration of Blacks Immigrating to Ohio, 1861-1863.