How this passion took root:
In 2009, I was enjoying a standing monthly dinner with cousins and mentioned that my genealogical research had hit the period in history where I met our family’s enslavement. Dismayed, I suggested that I’d expected my research may find it’s final chapter there, as I expected that pavestones which had so eagerly guided me to that point would abruptly end there.
Hours later, a cousin sleuthed the internet using the name I had given over dinner, and found an article, written by a journalist in New Hampshire, detailing the events surrounding a lecture given by a local historian and focused on a freedom seeking ‘fugitive slave’, Oliver Gilbert. This historian had become familiar with Oliver Gilbert through her research on abolitionist Moses Cartland.
I then connected with historian and researcher Jody Fernald (University of New Hampshire) who’d suggested that we may find our family’s papers in the hands of an African American memorabilia collector in Philadelphia. Indeed, the was proven to have been the case. It was learned that the memorabilia collector had come to acquire the contents of Gilbert family scrapbook, photos and other artifacts, as well as the handwritten, unpublished memoir of Oliver Cromwell Gilbert (1832-1912). Oliver’s wife, Maria, had penned the memoir.
The Memoir
Oliver Gilbert’s memoir covered his life in slavery, his escape using the network we know as The Underground Railroad and his incredible life in freedom, which included abolitionism, activism, politics, musical endeavors and lecturing. In freedom, Oliver combined his celebrated oratory talents with musical abilities to create the Gilbert Family Singers (or Gilbert Jubileers), touring the northern states for 57 years to lecture about slavery and sing about freedom. More than 100 newspaper articles have been found which cover these performances. I was able to purchase these items and re-establish the family’s connection with tangible ties to a lifetime of liberation.
Going Back to Dixie
On March 17, 1884, Oliver Gilbert returned to Maryland, “to show them what freedom had done for me”. In the month and years that followed, he reunited and established relationships with the family of his enslavers, most notably, Edwin G. Warfield, Maryland’s Governor. Warfield and Gilbert exchanged letters and debated topics such as slavery, politics, voting rights, and, most critically, the treatment of the enslaved people held in bondage by Warfield’s ancestors, which included Oliver, his siblings, aunts, uncles, mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. Oliver Gilbert’s ancestors had been enslaved by Warfield’s ancestors prior to the Revolution.
Bringing it Forward
Following in the footsteps of my second great grandfather, in 2009 I began making my own trips ‘Back to Dixie’ in search of truth. Dozens of sojourns during these past 14 years have revealed that the legacy of my ancestors and the founding of the United States of America are intertwined with such complexity that there is no disputing, nor questioning the facts which have presented themselves.
I have more than once entered the kitchen where my ancestor-women (my great grandmother Cynthia, Celia’s mother Rachel, and Rachel’s mother Celia) were enslaved as cooks to the Watkins family, and have been served a meal prepared by the descendant of the enslaver – a reunion of sorts which highlights the complexity in which these situations reside and continue to take shape.
I have also followed Oliver Gilbert’s journey to freedom, physically plotting the path and ‘meeting’ those who helped. I have literally traveled to each stop along the way, researching and reliving his courageous dash for liberty and the protective custody in which he lived until after the Civil War. Having sat with descendants of abolitionists who assisted Oliver Gilbert, I’ve developed a network of current-day celebrants of what once was and continues to be a recognition of self-liberating people, inclusive of my ancestor and others in their midst. The journey continues to unfold.
With the encouragement of our family, historians, researchers and writers, I’m preparing to publish the memoir of Oliver Cromwell Gilbert wrapped in the benefit of 14 years of research, illuminated by the revelations of modern-day understanding of our past, and inspired by the ongoing sojourns of a current- day black woman who invites the past to resurface in whatever ways will inspire the revelation of truth and reconciliation.
