After the abolition of slavery, formerly enslaved individuals yearned to reunite with their families, torn apart during the domestic slave trade. Seeking their loved ones, many turned to a simple yet hopeful method: placing ads in newspaper want ad sections, hoping the sought-after family member or anyone familiar would chance upon the plea and respond.
Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery, a website chronicling such journeys, sheds light on the stories of those seeking familial reunification. Below is an overview of the project, as described on their about page.
Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery aims to identify, digitize, transcribe, and publish ads placed in newspapers across the United States (and beyond) by formerly enslaved people searching for family members and loved ones after emancipation. These newspaper ads began appearing in the 1830s (our earliest ad appeared in The Liberator in 1832) and greatly increased in frequency in the years immediately following emancipation (1865) and continued well into the 20th century. (The collection includes an ad that appeared in The Richmond Planet in 1922.) These ads not only document the extensive separation of Black families through the domestic slave trade but also attest to the persistent efforts thousands of people made to reunite with those from whom they had been separated. In the ads, mothers search for children separated through sale, daughters and sons seek parents, men and women inquire about partners and spouses, and siblings search for one another—they include names, describe events, and recall last seen locations. All this information, crucial to genealogists and scholars alike, is published in this open-access collection.
After reading a few heartbreaking stories, I was curious to see if there were any ads placed in Monongahela’s newspaper, The Daily Republican and I found this from the June 25, 1888 issue.
Josepine mentions the borough of Roscoe, a borough a few miles up river from Monongahela near California PA. In 1888, The Daily Republican would have been the newspaper covering that area. I searched for mentions of both “Leroy Smith” and “Josephine Smith” in other issues of the paper but the instances I found probably referred to other people.
The ad also mentions that Josephine lives in Indianapolis, but why would she have responses to the ad mailed to a Monongahela post office box? That begs the question: Who was checking the mail for her in Monongahela, Pa?
I wonder if Josephine ever reunited with her brother Leroy. Could there be other want ads in the Daily Republican of formerly enslaved people searching for family members? Do you know of any stories of formerly enslaved people who lived in the Monongahela area? As always, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below. I love to hear from Lost Monongahela readers.
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