A descendant of an enslaver from Nashville reached out to me via the database to ask if I wanted to see family documents he inherited about his ancestor- there was a notebook
“Ages of W.H. Lovell’s Black Family". This was the first time I had seen records from the 1850s re: enslaved people referred to as someone's Black family in the ledger directly. I was stunned to think he would admit to having a Black family on paper.

Spent today sharing research about the family of #Nashville's William Edmondson with documentary film makers. He was a descendant of @FortNegley (his father died building it) and the first African-American folk art sculptor w/his own exhibition at MoMA @MuseumModernArt. @FortNegley @MuseumModernArt With help from Krista Castillo at @FortNegley, our team collated various Union Army labor documentation & found some more of his relatives, and those of the man who raised him- Orange Edmondson, as well as some of the others who were enslaved by his enslaver.

Spent my Saturday at the Tennessee Central Railway Museum, with their archivist Carter Newton. He's indexing their employment records and finding about 20% of the employees from the early 20th century were Black, from neighborhoods around @FortNegley. What does that mean? It means another source of records from the laborers who built @FortNegley, the soldiers who defended it in the Battle of Nashville, and their descendants who remained in the area after the war!