Rachel Frazier, Across Generations, 2025
Down the Rabbit Hole
Organizations profit from volunteers financially, materially and emotionally all across the world. The Maryland State Archives Research Department is among those agencies that reap tangible benefits from the cadre of persons from a variety of backgrounds (amateur or professional, student or professor, youth or adult) who annually contribute to our mission. The best synergy of any institution which utilizes and values the assistance of its public is that both their interests and efforts symmetrically align. For our Research Department and, more specifically, our Legacy of Slavery Division, the goal for our involvement with volunteers has always been to devise projects about which both the worker and Archives will feel proud. Since its inception as an initiative in 2001, the study of African American history has been one of the most prominent to collaborate with inspired private researchers who are both inquisitive and dedicated.
The challenge of sustaining any effort during the pandemic is daunting. Still, the Archives did so by continuing its two decades long project to document free and enslaved Blacks and mulattos through the Federal Census pre and post Civil War years of 1830 - 1880. The goal of this record mining is to identify, document, and add these individuals to the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland online database and thereby recognize and bring to life thousands of Maryland's African American population who had been lost to a less caring historical regard, both during and after slavery's existence. Alongside this journey, we encourage our volunteers to indulge their curiosity and note any findings which strike them as particularly unusual or surprising. Some of these discoveries have included finding lone white children living with Black families and an African American man having a sizable "Personal Value" of $20,000 in 1880 which today would be equivalent to approximately $591,000. We encourage our volunteers to look beyond the face value of a record like it is an open book to an unknown past. Many of our crew do that and more, proudly going "down the rabbit hole."
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