A couple of weeks ago, when I bought In Search of Our Roots, I’d also seen a book by John F. Baker Jr. called The Washingtons of Wessyngton Plantation. Tonight, I went ahead and purchased this book too. I will probably not be able to start reading it right away, but I’m glad to own it now. The Wessyngton Plantation was here in Tennessee and the author used their papers held on file at the Tennessee State Library & Archives for some of his research, so this is very close to home for me. You can read more about the plantation in the online version of Profiles of African-Americans in Tennessee.
In the book, the author accounts his family’s background, as well as information about other slave family descendants as he discovered them through his research. Again, this is another example of my previously expressed wish that books of this nature also do accompanying online family trees to faciliate later discovery by others and possible extended family members. One of the main ancestors of the author is Granville Washington 1831-1898) of which I find no information in Ancestry Trees in a quick and dirty search.
Biographies + Online gedcoms/family trees are my desire. Who will be the first author to do it? I am encouraged though to see that on his website, Mr. Baker does have a few representative documents and some newspaper articles about his research. He is on Facebook, on MySpace, and has a blog too where he continues to share his research. This looks like a great start to my dream 🙂
And, unlike Gates’ book, his is searcheable over at Google Books. Mr. Baker will be here in Nashville for a book signing in a week, I must try to go!
See below for a two mintue overview of the book
New Book about Wessyngton Plantation
Fascinating story. Mr. Baker is fortunate that the enslavers of his family kept such copious records and that his family stayed together. His book provides a factual glimpse into the everyday lives of people who were held in bondage but who took every opportunity to demonstrate that they were not in fact slaves. The white Washingtons recorded the actions and behavior but I am not sure they really got it. A great read and chock full of facts and details!