Novice in the Archive

"The combination of increased access with the development of powerful digital searching tools has the potential to transform the nature and the scale of students’ relationship to the material itself. For the first time perhaps it allows the novice learner to get into the archives and engage in the kinds of archival activities that only expert learners used to be able to do."

Randy Bass and Roy Rosenzweig, "Rewiring the History and Social Studies Classroom," 1999.

Old Isaac Remained

"all our married people who had married out of our farms, have been sold to the masters of their husbands or wifes, or to the next neighbors of them, so that husbands & wives are together, but some children who could not be sold with their mothers, have been sent with the others to Louisiana. There remain in our farms only few old people, well provided for their life times. So old Isaac remained at W. Marsh; his daughter Nelly is gone with her husband Peter, whom Henry Young had sold for the purpose"

Fr. Grivel to Fr. Lancaster, May 4, 1839

The Enslaved Community

• 1,132 individuals owned by the Jesuits (1717-1840)
  • 598 individuals with birth years
• 48 enslaved people owned by others
• 34 free Blacks

Relationships in the Records

• 108 inferred partnerships
  • 13 sacramental marriages
• 400 identified parental relationship
  • 87 baptisms
  • 141 births
• 56 deaths indicated
  • 26 deaths with specific date