Searching for Hannah Crafts: Kate Wheeler Cooper and the First Novel by an African-American Woman

FAIN: FT-52943-04

Gregg Alan Hecimovich
East Carolina University (Greenville, NC 27858-5235)

The Kate Wheeler Cooper collection at East Carolina University may hold the key to the most intriguing mystery in contemporary literary study: "Who is Hannah Crafts?" My project links the recently discovered manuscript, "The Bondswoman's Narrative by Hannah Crafts, a Fugitive Slave Recently Escaped from North Carolina," to the Kate Wheeler Cooper Collection housed at East Carolina University. Preliminary research suggests that the Wheeler family correspondence included in the Kate Wheeler Cooper papers provides definitive evidence identifying "Hannah Crafts" as an escaped slave from North Carolina; the papers also point to a new direction in the search for the historical "Hannah Crafts."