Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 I consulted a much older cousin, my father's contemporary, about the validity of the claims within this 'Grandfather Gilbert' narrative. Who'd written this? And who was Oliver Cromwell Gilbert? That cousin, Bertha Gilbert Jones, explained...
Stephanie Gilbert
Part 3 – How I Came to Possess The Autobiography and Other Assorted Miracles
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Ethel Hawkins, then 70 years old, the Philadelphia Black history artifact collector, verbally shared a passage from the autobiography which led Fernald to believe Hawkins was holding one of the most powerful links to the antebellum south and the...
Part 2 – How I Came to Possess the Autobiography and Other Assorted Miracles
Part 1 Part 2 The legal-sized pages of Oliver Gilbert’s autobiography were enumerated, and the bottom corner of each page revealed an encircled set of numbers – a word count. These pages were meant for publication. We know that Oliver had been encouraged to write his...
Part 1 – How I Came to Possess the Autobiography and Other Assorted Miracles
I awakened today, Saturday, with the intent of submitting a few simple paragraphs to Wikipedia such that Oliver would have his own page. He should, right? I read Wikipedia's Terms of Use and got started. That was 8am. Here, it is 3:40pm and I've been writing non-stop,...
A Silver Jubilee Celebration Fit for a Queen! Queen Tubman, That Is….
(Video above - speaking is Dr Cheryl LaRoche associate research professor in Historic Preservation in the School of Architecture, Planning and...
FORMER SLAVE DEAD — We Remember July 11, 1912
Oliver Gilbert's Baltimore Sun death notice was published July 14, 1912 "Former Slave Dead" This week, we remember the death of Oliver Cromwell Kelly, who became Oliver Gilbert on when the quaker abolitionists in lower Lancaster County asked him to change his name to...
Prayer Books, Photographs and Plantations
Spent this rainy Philadelphia weekend sorting through three of the seven boxes of Richland Farm books and ephemera acquired at Caplan's auction house in Savage, MD. We'd already, in March, participated in the online auction for the furnishings and collectibles from...
It’s Raining DNA Kits
We’re thankful for the Ancestry.com Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day sale on DNA test kits as we are now stocked up in preparation for our Maryland Family Integrity effort. The first set of kits have been shipped to likely descendants of Cynthia Snowden (enslaved) and...
Gravesite Tribute to Alexander Lightfoot Manly
A wonderful feature of Ancestry dot com is that it signals you to upcoming milestone events related to those in your family tree. Simply open the family tree on which you'd like to focus, then click the 'home' tab. Upon scrolling the page, you'll see upcoming wedding...
Oh! Hello GGGrandfather Oliver. Fancy Meeting You Here!
Today, we visited the Harriet Tubman Cultural Center in Columbia, Maryland to experience the Oliver Cromwell Gilbert commemorative exhibit as well the rest of the impressive and immersive interpretation of the lives of African Americans in Howard County. When the...
Stephanie Gilbert
Stephanie Gilbert is the 2nd great granddaughter of Oliver Cromwell Kelly Gilbert. Stephanie resides just outside of Philadelphia, PA and acts as the family's historian and archivist. The family's archives are extensive, as the Gilbert family history includes the unpublished memoirs of Oliver Gilbert, the founding of the AME Church (Reverend Clayton Durham - Stephanie's 4th great grandfather), the primary source archives of the Wilmington, NC massacre (Alexander Manly - relative), the founding of Jack and Jill of America (Mary Gilbert Manly and Helen Chase Gilbert - relatives), The Moors of Delaware (Durham ancestors), etc.