The Archives is developing a Computer-based Historical Research System (CHRS), which the summer research work helped refine. Using this system, information is collected and recorded in database files. Database record fields are related directly to a document from which the information is taken, or on a less formal analytical text format. "Record stripping" files are those based on direct transcriptions of a source document. For example, the "City Directory" databases have fields for the last and first names, occupation, and address, exactly as given in the directory. "Analytical" databases rely on text fields to record abstracts from records, or even propose interpretations, hypotheses, or comments. "Political Activities" and "Real Property" are examples of analytical files. Each file includes a tracking number identifying the individual or subject. All information about any individual can be connected, even across dozens of separate database files. The original sources available for this study included city directories, census records, pension files, court papers, charter records, city maps, Sachse prints, and Sanborn Fire Insurance Company maps.
This summer showed that biographical files alone were insufficient to research adequately African American communities, especially biographies limited to Civil War veterans. The research began with the lives of nine USCT soldiers and other nine persons associated with the veterans. These subjects included the first African-American member of the Medical and Chirurgical Society, a woman grocer and rentier, several black politicians, a barber, an undertaker and a minister. To these subjects were added leaders of the 1870 celebration of the ratification of the XV Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Project staff developed new databases and tracking systems to study sites and organizations. The researchers uncovered the stories of African American social, beneficent, and political organizations, as well as many potential historical sites. The organizations themselves became the subjects of study, just as had the people in the biographical research. In addition, the research provided insights into topics important to the black community such as racial violence, education, segregation of transportation facilities.
Through the investigation of individuals and organizations, the project staff was able to identify 139 sites that appeared in the historical records or that drew the researchers' attention when seeking out existing buildings. About forty of the buildings still exist, but another 40 have been lost. The fate of the remainder is yet to be determined. Even sites no longer standing need to be considered for potential recognition or interpretation. Our new understanding of the historical records improved our understanding of historic sites in unexpected ways. Among the 40 sites which no longer exist in their historically significant form is a jail pen from which the Union USCT recruiter liberated slaves for military service. Common lore identified an iron-fronted building on Pratt Street as being the site of that slave-pen, but the research showed that the actual site is where a parking garage now stands. On other hand, the site of a shopping center built on top of the Laurel Cemetery which contained the remains of Civil War veterans should be remembered both as a resting place of black heroes and a reminder of the lack of respect for such burial sites. [For a list of sites, see Appendix A, Findings, Parts 4 and 5.]
The examination of organizations led to the project's most significant find: the amazing history of the site on which now stands the Vansant Building at 210 East Lexington Street. A building there housed the Douglass Institute which was the most significant single organization to the secular African American community after the Civil War. Before the war, it was an institution of higher learning called Newton University. During the war the Union Army used the building as a hospital. The site , even as it appears today, deserves recognition of its historically significant past. [For the building's history, see Appendix A: Findings, Part 1].
In addition to the process of studying individuals and institutions, the project sought to identify neighborhoods with a strong African American history. The organizers of the 1870 parade specifically chose the route to march through such neighborhoods. For instance, they erected a triumphal arch on Orchard Street, near the Metropolitan Methodist Church.
Using the parade route as a guide, the researchers began entering all the information from the census of 1870 for areas around the route. The researchers quickly discovered that the census takers were erratic in their paths and left out a large number of residents. Also, they learned that current index access to the 1870 census is wholly insufficient for African Americans. The project staff linked census data with address information from the city directories for the over 3000 entries from the Twentieth Ward. Time did not allow for more extensive entries to be made, but records for subject individuals supplement the line by line entries. The databases for African Americans appearing in the 1871, 1881, and 1891 city directories have been completed. Those databases will be combined with GIS mapping to indicate concentrations of African Americans. [See Findings: Part 3 for a description of neighborhoods and preliminary interpretations of census data.]
The Archives is preparing its many research database files for integration into a Geographic Information System. The Archives will utilize MIPS to insure compatibility of the data, mapping and geographical files among the various state agencies that use GIS. Earlier software experiments with this data and with scanned map images or Tiger files showed the Atlas system to have limitations but is still an essential to the process. This project's 1995 phase will concentrate on GIS and hyper-link applications to combine address data, map images or files, and graphics in the most modern and useful software environment. The information will eventually be shared across the INTERNET.
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