About this Substack
I discovered my great-grandmother Margaret's parents via a Civil War pension file (more on that in a future post). Turns out that her father Henry Evans enlisted in Company H of the 11th Regiment of the United States Colored Infantry. The color within his pension file made me want to research others within the company and regiment.
At the same time, I have felt an increasing urgency to not simply do the research and sit on it, but to share what I find. I easily fall prey to the dopamine bumps that research offers. I can lose myself poring through records. But writing? For public consumption? That freaks me out. So, I tend to default to more records, more DNA tests, more research trips…
But these pension files are too rich to keep to myself. My desire to be useful trumps my desire to stay with what's easy. After all, people out there descend from these soldiers. Thus, I wanted to create this space to share stories of the soldiers from the 11th regiment. These stories use the pension files as their primary source with other records to supplement. I'll likely layer pieces on specific localities, enslavers, or anything else relevant.
You see, genealogy has these concepts of "One-Name Studies" and "One-Place Studies" in which the researcher(s) focus on a particular surname or a specific place in lieu of tracing a specific line. Think of this blog as a "One-Regiment Study." Pension files can go beyond names/ages/birthplaces to paint a picture of the soldier and their community. This is especially true for the United States Colored Troops. Many of the soldiers in the 11th regiment came from the same geographic region; taken as a whole, the files illustrate webs of community relationships.
Why the title "Manifesting Freedom"? I'm no numerologist, but apparently the number 11 indicates "strong manifesting potential." In a sense, these men who left the plantation to enlist were manifesting their freedom. And, while cheeky, I didn't think "Lucky 11" would strike the right tone in discussing the formerly enslaved…
I owe a debt of gratitude to Leslie Anderson and her 1st Colored Cavalry blog. It served as my inspiration for doing this.