In January 2025, staff at the American Antiquarian Society attended a workshop on African American print culture taught by Dr. Derrick Spires, associate professor of English at the University of Delaware (and an AAS member and councilor), generously sponsored by the Nadia Sophie Seiler Family Fund. Dr. Spires shared how Black people used African American newspapers as a communication platform to reconnect with their families and community in the wake of the Civil War. One source caught my eye – a project called Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery.
Launched in 2017, Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery seeks to identify, digitize, transcribe, and publish information-seeking personal advertisements placed in newspapers by formerly enslaved people looking for their loved ones. The project aims to publish 5,000 ads. According to their website at the time of writing, they currently have found 4,790 ads.
Inspired by Dr. Spires’ presentation, I wanted to find out if the formidable newspaper collection at AAS held any advertisements that the Last Seen project had not yet documented. I suspected that our collections could help the project – and my suspicion proved correct!
Focusing on searching African American newspapers that AAS has recently acquired or not yet digitized, I was able to locate eight advertisements that Last Seen had not yet documented. After my communication with the project’s director, Dr. Judith Giesberg of Villanova University, AAS has shared the eight previously undiscovered ads that I was able to locate.
Connecting with the past across centuries is one of my favorite parts of working with AAS collections. My work here regularly reminds me that the hundreds of years spanning the past and the present are actually a lot shorter than most of us think. One story that I was able to find particularly reminded me of our shared humanity.
Last Seen recorded an advertisement in the November 24, 1881, issue of the Southwestern Christian Advocate, a newspaper from New Orleans, Louisiana. A man named Isaac Allen took out an “Information Wanted” ad seeking his brothers, Rufus and James Allen. It reads:
DEAR EDITOR: I desire to inquire for my brothers James and Rufus. Rufus I left on the Franklin pike, about seven miles from Louisville, Ky., with Sherman’s army. He was in the 30th Indiana regiment, third division, 14th army corps, and waiting on Capt. Jordan. I think the Captain lives in Indianapolis. Rufus belonged to Jack Mound, in Jonesboro, Ga. He had three brothers and one sister, Ella, Isaac, Ben, and James. Father was Thomas Allen, who belonged to Matilda Allen, a widow. James Allen left Chattanooga in 1860, for Atlanta, Ga., and I have not heard from him since. I suppose he went out West. ISAAC ALLEN, Chattanooga, Tenn,
In my searching, I found what appears to be another Allen brother’s advertisement published six years later, on December 24, 1887, in Justice, a Chattanooga, Tennessee, newspaper. Posted in the personal pages, the short advertisement contained a different kind of story. It reads:
Mr. Rufus Allen, of Waterproof, La., is in the city on a visit to his brother, Mr. Isaac Allen, 120 E st. For twenty-two years, each has sought the other, and after this long absence they meet in a brotherly clasp.
Two of the Allen brothers at last end their long search for each other. Readers of Last Seen did not have the record of Isaac and Rufus reuniting. Now, they will.
For further reading: Judith Giesberg, Last Seen: The Enduring Search By Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families (Simon & Schuster, 2025).
For more information on Last Seen, visit its webpage: informationwanted.org
