Virginia Freedmen's Extraction and Indexing Project at the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia

Virginia's governor will be making an announcement this morning about the Virginia Freedmen's Extraction and Indexing Project. The speech will take place at the Black History Museum and Cultural Center on East Clay Street in Richmond. Per his web site, "Governor Kaine will make an announcement regarding the digitizing of records of the Virginia Freedmen’s Bureau, the earliest major compilation of information on the African-American community including names, marriages, educational pursuits, work contracts, health care and legal services."

I think the project is near completion and may be opening to the public. However,I am not terribly familiar with the museum or the project itself. If you would like more information, you can check out the links below. The first link is for a PDF that layout the scope of the project. The second link is to the museum's web site.

Virginia Freedmen's Extraction and Indexing Project (PDF)

Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia

African American Lives on PBS

I just watched a show on PBS tonight that was a really good, genealogy-related program called "African American Lives". I think it was part two in a series of two but I missed the first fifteen minutes so I am not sure. The host is a man named Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - a historian but I am not terribly familiar with him or his work. It was nice, well-produced show that traced the ancestry of various black celebrities. I saw segments on Morgan Freeman, Don Cheadle, Chris Rock and a few others. The Morgan Freeman part was quite moving.

I do not want to give too much away but the part with Don Cheadle was pretty...I do not want to say funny but it was surely ironic. He was told that his ancestors were slaves even after the Civil War...they were owned by Chickasaw Indians, not white Southerners. Emancipation did not apply to them and they remained slaves for several extra years since the Chickasaw were not American citizens and therefore not bound by the same laws. He was shocked that the only other group with the messed-up treatment of African-Americans in this country were the Native Americans and even they were screwing his people over! Talk about irony! I never knew that Indians owned slaves out west so that was a great learning experience for me too.

You should try to catch the show if it comes back on. I am going to provide some links to the shows' web site and a You Tube video preview that you can watch. If you get to see the whole show one day, let me know what you thought.

• African American Lives
• African American Lives 2
  

The Vampire of Richmond

I thought I would give you a little Halloween treat, a Richmond ghost story of sorts that is mostly fact!

I am a big fan of Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond...I even bought my own spot in their mausoleum. It is a beautiful place, full of history both local and national. One of the great Hollywood stories involves the crypt of W. W. Pool. I have seen the name spelled as W. W. Poole but his crypt says Pool.

In 1925 a train tunnel collapsed in Church Hill and buried a large work crew along with their locomotive. I think they were patching brickwork in the ceiling when it all came tumbling down. There was no saving the unlucky souls, even the ones who survived the initial collapse. The train is so well buried that several attempts, even one as late as 2006, could not get the train out. Engineers have pretty much ruled it impossible.

Shortly after the actual collapse a creature of ungodly description clawed its way out of the tunnel. It was charred, bloody and had jagged teeth. It was so frightening that it was chased by armed men through the streets until the creature reached Hollywood Cemetery. Just inside the cemetery gates is located a crypt, dug in the side of the hill, the resting place of W. W. Pool. The creature dashed into the unlocked crypt and disappeared.

Now, let's tell the other half of the story. There really was a disfigured being that crawled out of the rubble. It even had jagged teeth and was covered in blood. That being was Ben Mosby, a worker on the train who was scaled by the steam. He made it out of the tunnel and died a short while later in a local hospital. Ben was buried in Hollywood. Who knows where the vampire legend came from but it is at least partially true. I do not know how W. W. Pool got involved but I am sure there was a reason.

With all of the publicity, W. W. Pool has become a major attraction at Hollywood but in a bad way. People go to his grave to perform satanic rituals and leave all kinds of crazy stuff at his grave. I have heard that his body was stolen so many times that they finally buried him somewhere else.

I found the crypt the other day but did not get out of the car. The next time I am at the cemetery with someone else, I will go check it out in detail. I had something else happen at Hollywood that day which made me a little uneasy with getting out of the car. I will tell you about that in my next post.

If you would like to see the grave of Ben Mosby, you can click here for his memorial at Find-A-Grave.

Civil War Museum at the Exchange Hotel of Gordonsville

It has been ten days since I last posted anything. You probably thought that I was dead since I have been really good about posting daily as of late. I am still alive but I have been in New York on business and the Holiday Inn that I stayed in did not have Wi-Fi! I think it was supposed to have it but the darn thing was not working during the entire time. It was a pain in some ways but a nice vacation in others.

Tonight we went to the Civil War Museum at the Exchange Hotel in Gordonsville of Orange County. The hotel was built in 1860 and served both the Virginia Central Railroad and the Alexandria Railroad. The main purpose of the hotel was short-lived as it became the Gordonsville Receiving Hospital during the Civil War, caring for nearly 70,000 soldiers by the end of the war. Amazingly only about one percent of these soldiers died at the hospital, around 700 in all. They were originally buried on the grounds but later moved - Confederate soldiers were moved to Maplewood Cemetery and Union soldiers to the national cemetery in Culpeper.

After the war, the Exchange became a Freedman's Bureau Hospital and later returned to use as a hotel. It has now been restored as a museum and historical society of sorts. I did not get to spend much time looking at their collections but the museum seems to have a large reading room with old maps, newspapers and hospital records pertaining to the hospital, hotel, town and county. I imagine if you visited during normal hours, you would be able to view their holdings. They also had a large collection of Civil War-related books and a gift shop.

The reason we went to the Exchange tonight was for a ghost tour, in honor of Halloween. This was their eighth annual tour, taking place on October 24th and 25th. It cost $12 for myself, my wife and our two young children. They gave us free cider and coco plus cookies for the kids. The tour took us through the top two floors of the building, with reenactors in each room. They tried to reenact the death scenes of people who died in the hotel and supposedly now haunt the grounds.

Overall it was okay. I mean, they only do this two nights per year so you cannot set the bar too high. It is probably a major fundraiser for the museum so I can definitely support that. If you are looking for a haunted house or a true ghost tour, this would not have been for you. I mean, if the place was haunted you would never know it with all of the reenactors stomping around. Again, not that anything was wrong, it just was not a ghost tour as much as a history lesson about hospital life and death during the Civil War.

In looking at the museum's website, I did notice that they have a list of the dead. I do not know how complete it is but you can view it by clicking here.

And, just in case you were wondering, I did not see any ghosts. I even got to spend a little quite time in one of the rooms...alone. I was in there for about ten minutes and even tried to provoke any spirits that might have been there. I watch Ghost Hunters on SciFi...I know the deal. I asked them to please make their presence known, to give me some small sign. Once that did not work, I tried to be a little more aggressive and tick off anything that might be there (but again to no avail). If there are any ghosts at the Exchange Hotel, they must have taken the night off.

Genealogy Fair at the Family Life Center of Fincastle, Virginia, October 11, 2008

I wanted to pass this along. I am going to try to attend but I do not know that for certain at this point...

"October 11, 2008 - Genealogy Fair being held at Fincastle in the Family Life Center at the corner of Church & Academy St, Fincastle, Va. Hours 9-3 . Plenty of free parking available.

Our speakers are, Pam Young will talk about the holdings in the Virginia Room at the Main Library in Roanoke on Jefferson St., The Botetourt Historical Society will tell us about early Botetourt County and their holdings in the museum, Loretta Caldwell will tell about researching Botetourt County Courthouse Records, Susan Mason will give a short lesson on writing your personal history, Harry Gleason will talk about the history of Buchanan, & Sally Eads about Colonial Women.. The Botetourt Genealogy Club will be showing photos from the cemetery photograph project all day. There will be a book vendor with local authors and Botetourt history. Botetourt Genealogy Club, Botetourt Historical Society & Museum, Alleghany County, Rockbridge County, and Bedford County Historical & Genealogy Societies along with several about 20 researchers have tables with many Botetourt County surnames .. There will be a large display of churches, schools and people in the African American Communities. A tour of Fincastle will be provided, weather permitting. We will have some door prizes for both the vendors and the public. The event is Free. Donations accepted.

Friends of the Fincastle Library will serve food. Funds from the sale will be earmarked for the Fincastle Library Genealogy Room.

The Courthouse is open 8:30 - 4:30 Monday - Friday. The library is open 9-9 Monday & Thursday, 9-6 Tuesday & Wednesday, 9-5 on Friday. Normal Saturday hours are 9-1, however the day of the fair the library will be open 9-3. The Museum is open 7 days a week. 10-2 except Sunday 12-4.

I hope this helps you with your plans to visit Fincastle."

Monticello Plantation Database of the Thomas Jefferson Slaves

Monticello, plantation of President Thomas Jefferson, included over six hundred slaves between 1774 and 1826. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation has made a searchable database of those slaves and can be found at the following link: Monticello Plantation Database

I have not played with it much but the database appears to create family groupings of the slaves and tells as much about their lives as possible. If you are searching for African-American genealogy sources in Virginia, this appears to be one of the most thorough.

I looked up Sally Hemings and the father of most of her children were actually given as "almost certainly Thomas Jefferson."