Friend of Friends Friday - William Hargrove Papers Part 2

So how about an explanation of how I came upon the slave inventories that I found for William. Before I go into that, I want to advise that William is not a direct ancestor of my slaveowner James, but I believe they are closely related. I gathered this information for my benefit while I was in the meantime attempting to determine the relationship between William and James Sr. I believe they may be first cousins. Until them, I sincerely hope this documentation can be of value to Somebody. Please note that William lived in Granville (now Vance) County North Carolina and eventually moved to Alabama. I am attempting to resolve conflicts between information found in this microfilm and info on this website. I expect I will come to closer understanding when I am able to obtain a copy of The Hargrove Family Study by Dorothy P. Beebe and Johnny L. Hargrove. Something else I also really need is William's will. Some of these transcribed documents state that William's will is contained on these films, but I didn't see it.

The 3rd edition of The Source was published June 2006 and Tony Burroughs wrote the African American Research Chapter 14. (Have you been to Tony's site lately?) My local Family History Center got a copy of The Source right away and I was able to take advantage of the wealth of information in it. Reading it carefully, I found that there was a reference book that needed to be accessed in hopes of finding many more records. In The Source, Chapter 14, Tony Burroughs identified the book titled A Genealogical Index to the Guides of the Microfilm Edition of Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution Through the Civil War by Jean L. Cooper. At that time I had not heard of this index book. If you want to follow along, get The Source 3rd edition. btw, The Source is one of the free books available for viewing at Ancestry.com. Start at page 664, The Transition from Slavery to Freedom. I found through Worldcat, at that time the nearest library with a copy of Cooper's book was the ACPL. I was able to ILL the book from some library (name not available) through the Dayton Library system. I was able to view the book but it had to remain in the library facility. I realized at that time I should have had the ILL sent to my nearest branch instead of downtown. It was my first ILL; we live and learn. The spring of 2007, the Cincinnati Public Library system obtained 2 copies of Cooper's book. I also identified that the Cincinnati Library Genealogy & History department has the entire 1500 microfilm set.

Do you use Worldcat? If you do and you have been following the dialogue here, you can see that searching Worlcat for Stampp, Kenneth and you will find the nearest library to you that has the 1500 films. When I went to the Cincy library Spring 2007, I was unable to find the Cooper book on the shelf. I inquired at the reference desk and she rechecked the stacks with me and couldn't find it either. Then she looked thoughtful and told me to wait a few moments, she knew where to look next. She found it on her colleague's desk. Her colleague was Mr Daly (sp) and he had a copy on his desk preparing for a presentation that I didn't know of at that time. The reference librarian loaned me the book to browse but I had to return it directly to her so she would know where to return it to Mr Daly's desk. In the meantime, I found out what presentation Mr Daly was preparing for. It was for the Federation of Genealogy Society's 2007 Conference in Fort Wayne, IN. I should add a tidbit that the brand new Allen County Public Library had just completed construction in December 2006 and the library move was over the next couple of weeks after that. (Another tidbit here, [correct spelling of Mr Daly's name and the title of his presentation] cannot be confirmed at this time because my FGS syllabus for 2007 is in storage).

Cut to the chase, I went to Mr Daly's presentation and it was excellent! He described in pretty good detail how to use the Cooper book. Other long story short is that I requested and the Dayton Public Library was able to purchase a copy of their own. I am pointing you to LibraryThing to see the cover because neither Worldcat nor Amazon have the cover on their page.

I should also explain, just in case some of you have seen them, that there are other indices to Stampp's collection. Martin Schipper also created indices University Publications of America, 1993. I don't want you to be confused if you go to your local library and find the Schipper books but not the Cooper book. Schipper's books have the same content as the cooper books and then some. I don't want to suggest that as a problem of the Schipper books because both Schipper's and Cooper's books are both valuable in their own right. Cooper's book is more concise and Schipper books are more thorough. To expand, they are both indices but to take a rough guess, there may be 35-40 volumes of the Schipper books that covers all of the information contained in the Cooper books and then some. The one volume of Schipper where I found William HARGROVE covered Stampp's Series J, part 13. There are 40 microfilm reels contained in PART 13. Granted, you know that you don't want to scroll through 1500 microfilm looking for one slave family. You also probably rather not scan through 40 volumes of Schipper to find which film you want. In an ideal situation, you would have access to both the Cooper book and then the Schipper indices. But if you do not have access to Cooper, Schipper is still better than scrolling 1500 microfilm.

Here is the pages from Schipper describing the William HARGROVE papers. It maybe that the entire content of this blog has been discussed on previous blogs but it may have been years ago, like when the Source 3rd edition came out . An additional note is that Cooper has updated her book using a different publisher and the title is Index to Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations: Locations, Plantations, Surnames and Collections, 2d ed.


Series Description from Schipper
{P1010870}
Account book belonging to William Hargrove of Granville (now Vance) County, N.C. This volume which has loose sheets of paper and other sets of bound pages inserted into it, contains birth records for William Hargrove's slaves; stud records for his horses and cattle; lists of household and plantation expenses; blacksmith and store accounts; tax records; planting and harvest notes; and some genealogical information on the Hargrove family.

While I am preparing this post Part 2, I went to the FamilySearch Wiki (LOVE the Wiki!) and found the reference to Ante-Bellum... and was going to link to it. What else do I see? Lexis-Nexis (L-N) has their links on the Wiki, Research Wiki — African American Slavery and Bondage. I had seen the L-N links from some other university site years before, but they were dead. I can suppose the linker hadn't paid the rent. Anyway, the links on the Wiki to L-N are in *.pdf format. If you hit one of them, you will find what are the actual Schipper indices. So yeah, you are closer to doing a lot more research online, but there are 55 *.pdf files. The Schipper book I was using is Series J, Part 13. 128 pdf pages on L-N. Some are not searchable. IMHO, the Cooper book (after The Source) is still the best place to start after you have determined your slaveowner surnames. Even if you narrow down which L-N pdf file you want, you still don't have the Hargrove papers themselves, only a description of what's on the film. It Is a valuable resource to know which ones of the 1500 films you want to order if you have to go that route. In addition to the L-N *.pdf files, the Wiki page with the links also has links to the library catalog of the 1500 microfilms.

Referencing back again to the Cooper book and The Source, if you know the slaveowners' surnames AND you have a good understanding of what I have explained in this post, go ahead to Cooper. If you don't know the slaveowner surnames OR this post has turned your brain to mush, Go to The Source, Black Roots or where ever else you need to go to get that information.

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