{"id":2578,"date":"2012-12-28T16:07:54","date_gmt":"2012-12-28T16:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=2578"},"modified":"2022-09-22T14:03:27","modified_gmt":"2022-09-22T18:03:27","slug":"missing-person-ads-in-old-newspapers-describe-missing-ancestors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/missing-person-ads-in-old-newspapers-describe-missing-ancestors.html","title":{"rendered":"Missing Person Ads in Old Newspapers Describe Missing Ancestors"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you are tracking down a missing person and want others to help your search, you need to describe the missing person well. That\u2019s what they did in this old runaway slave ad published in 1828.<\/p>\n

\"$25<\/a>
North Carolina Sentinel (New Bern, North Carolina), 9 August 1828, page 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gilbo was a \u201cNegro man\u201d from the area \u201cNew Bern\u201d who is described as being \u201cbetween 25 and 30 years of age, light complexion, about five feet high and has an impediment in his speech when closely interrogated.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, not very tall.<\/p>\n

The runaway slave ad said that he was wearing \u201can Osnaburghs shirt and trowsers, and cloth round Jacket.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does that look like?<\/p>\n

Perhaps similar to this 19th century woodcut, in which a slave is wearing the exact same type of shirt, round coat and pants described in the 1828 missing slave advertisement:<\/p>\n

\"19th<\/a>
19th century woodcut illustration of a slave. Image credit: Eco.Soul.Intellectual.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to Florence Montgomery (Textiles in America), osnaburg was made in blue, white, brown and white, with stripes, checks or solid colors.<\/p>\n

This was known as \u201cNegro cloth\u201d and was coarse, unbleached or brown-colored cotton similar to today\u2019s osnaburg. See the discussion on the Hart Cottage Quilts site: http:\/\/ugrrquilt.hartcottagequilts.com\/rr5.htm<\/span><\/p>\n

The missing slave advertisement said that Gilbo might be near the William Barrows plantation, on the road to Pembroke, since his wife was a slave on that plantation.<\/p>\n

These small missing person ads can give a lot of descriptive information about our ancestors. Keep an eye out for these old advertisements when researching your family history in a newspaper archive!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this article, Thomas Jay Kemp describes how missing person ads in old newspapers can fill in details about the ancestors on your family tree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12713],"tags":[2726,12,2719,10656,2020],"class_list":["post-2578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genealogy-research-tips","tag-classified-ads","tag-genealogy","tag-genealogy-search-tips","tag-missing-person-ads","tag-newspaper-archives"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/illustration-1228-2012-featured-graphic-runaway-slave.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2578"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86877,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2578\/revisions\/86877"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}