O Say Can You See: Early Washington, D.C. Law and Family Project

FAIN: RZ-51615-13

University of Nebraska, Lincoln (Lincoln, NE 68503-2427)
William G. Thomas (Project Director: December 2012 to May 2017)
Jennifer E. Guiliano (Co Project Director: December 2012 to May 2017)

Creation of a digital archive and website, presentation of virtual seminars, and research and writing of a scholarly monograph and journal articles related to a series of legal cases and family networks in early Washington, D.C. (24 months)

This project explores multigenerational black and white family networks in early Washington, D.C., by collecting, digitizing, making accessible, and analyzing over 4,000 case files from the D.C. court from 1808 to 1815, records of Maryland courts, and related documents about these families. Scholars from the University of Maryland and the University of Nebraska will collaborate by uncovering the web of litigants, jurists, legal actors, and participants in this community, and by placing these family networks in the foreground of our interpretive framework of slavery and national formation. We focus first on the landmark 1813 case Queen v. Hepburn, the only petition for freedom from slavery heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, and a foundational case establishing the hearsay rule. We propose to document the relationships within and among black and white families in early D.C. at the center of these cases, host virtual seminars to refine our methods, and produce a series of studies in monograph and article form.

Associated Products

(Dis)covering Race: Legal Records and the Fragmentary Histories of American Families (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: (Dis)covering Race: Legal Records and the Fragmentary Histories of American Families
Author: Jennifer Guiliano
Author: William G. Thomas III
Abstract: (Disc)overing Race explores the intersections of digital history, geneaology, legal history, and computational technologies in uncovering the fragmentary histories of American families. Like oral histories and census records, legal records have long formed the archival substructure of the stories historians rely upon. Yet, legal records of the 19th century are often fragmentary---bits and pieces of the stories preserved in the official records---that must be supplemented with careful contextualization and related evidence. This paper explores the benefits and limitations of using computational approaches to categorizing, relating, and displaying these fragmentary records through an exploration of the O Say Can You See Project, an exploration of multigenerational black and white family networks in early Washington, D.C., that collects, digitizes, and analyzes over 4,000 case files from the D.C. court from 1808 to 1815. Attempting to document the relationships within and among black and white families in early D.C., the O Say Can You See Project offers novel ways to consider how we can interlink enslaved and free African Americans, as well as enslaved and white families through fragmentary records sources. This presentation focuses first on how digital tools allow us to tell multiplicities of histories that allow us to animate hidden, often fragmentary histories, of race, gender, and nineteenth century life and second on the multigenerational networks of families and their use of legal processes.
Date: 01/03/2015
Primary URL: https://aha.confex.com/aha/2015/webprogram/Paper17556.html
Primary URL Description: Conference Program
Conference Name: American Historical Association

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