Dangerous Harbor: Finding Escaped Unfree Laborers in the 17th Century Chesapeake

FAIN: PW-290555-23

Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA 24061-2000)
Jessica Taylor (Project Director: July 2022 to present)
Chreston Miller (Co Project Director: February 2023 to present)
Sarah McLennan (Co Project Director: April 2023 to present)

The planning phase of a project that aims to make accessible seventeenth-century county court accounts of escape attempts of the Chesapeake Bay’s unfree people through digitization, guiding documents, transcriptions, a database, and a plan for expansion and broad, long-term accessibility and outreach.

This project will expand our knowledge of early American enslaved and indentured servant resistance, and racialized law through a database of court cases about escape attempts. Our cross-institutional team will digitize a sample of 17th-century court records from three counties in the Chesapeake region. Then, U.S. History students at a regional HBCU, Virginia State University, and Virginia Tech will transcribe records of escape attempts from these for course credit. Our team will then clean the data and design a database interoperable with “runaway” datasets history scholars use often. Finally, we will create a strategy to expand the dataset to 17th-century records of the entire Chesapeake region, and develop a sustainable outreach plan for work with historic sites, K-12 educators, and community organizations. The team will design reading guides, and a website and data visualization prototypes, making the data more accessible to descendant groups and other users in the future.

Associated Products

Dangerous Harbor: Collaborative and Student-Centered Primary Research and Digital Preservation (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Dangerous Harbor: Collaborative and Student-Centered Primary Research and Digital Preservation
Author: Sarah McLennan
Author: Grace Kostrzebski
Abstract: Dangerous Harbor represents the first large-scale effort to make accessible stories of escape from enslavement and servitude in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake. Funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities – Humanities Collections and Reference Resources planning grant, the team digitized and read court records from three counties in Virginia, creating a dataset with metadata standards, educational and contextual materials, data visualization examples, and data analysis methods. Kostrzebski and McLennan will discuss their ongoing work constructing a cross-institutional and interdisciplinary research collaboration alongside graduate and undergraduate students, and in making the digitized microfilm and dataset accessible to researchers and the public.
Date: 11-11-2024
Primary URL: http://https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EuqNFErog3Qg5oVwl0nI7yvgvXhUXKP9UhGCYtvKzbM/edit?usp=sharing
Primary URL Description: This is a Google link to the presentation.
Conference Name: Digital Archives in the Commonwealth

Early American Lives: Teaching History Research for Non-Majors (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Early American Lives: Teaching History Research for Non-Majors
Author: Jessica Taylor
Abstract: A workshop on teaching with these documents in a general education classroom (for example, US History to 1877).
Date: 04-15-2024
Primary URL: http://https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1XORAdWYAmNiE2Odl-BXdU59z37HM4rhW/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110518089764912634773&rtpof=true&sd=true
Primary URL Description: This is a link to the PowerPoint presentation.

Dangerous Harbor Digitized Image Sample: Westmoreland County (Database/Archive/Digital Edition)
Title: Dangerous Harbor Digitized Image Sample: Westmoreland County
Author: Grace Kostrzebski
Author: Hannah Schetselaar
Author: Sabrina Harris
Author: Zahra Modarres Vahid
Author: William Harper
Author: Diego Vega-Nazario
Author: Jessica Taylor
Abstract: This collection includes TIFF files showing courthouse documents from Westmoreland County in Virginia. They were collected in association with the Dangerous Harbor Project (2023-2024). These documents were used to identify escaped unfree laborers in the 17th century Chesapeake and the punishments associated with their escape.
Year: 2024
Primary URL: https://data.lib.vt.edu/collections/Dangerous_Harbor_Project_-_Westmoreland_County_Virginia/7590275
Primary URL Description: This is a sample of one of the pages created for long-term data preservation by VT Libraries and Virginia Tech students. Each county (three for this project) has its own page.
Access Model: Open Access

Wireframe and Data Visualization Sample (Web Resource)
Title: Wireframe and Data Visualization Sample
Author: Chreston Miller
Author: Ishana Garuda
Author: Michael Stamper
Author: Sarah McLennan
Abstract: These are the data visualization mockups and mockups produced for the future website. Also on this site, you can find our statement of ethics, guides to the documents, and videos produced by students.
Year: 2024
Primary URL: https://dangerousharbor.vt.domains/privacy-policy/data-viz/

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