Family reunification ads after emancipation
Following the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution,[A] emancipated African Americans searched for their lost families and placed want ads to reunify with them.
These "Information Wanted" and "Lost Friends" sections were common, and the Last Seen project, sponsored by Villanova University and Philadelphia's Methodist Episcopal Church, has been digitizing them since 2016.
[5] Even in old age, many enslaved people continued to think about their lost families; one 86-year-old man named Caleb Craig said "I has visions and dreams of her [his mother], in my sleep, sometime yet".
[17] In an 1865 issue of the Union Banner, an anonymous writer recognized the ubiquity of the "Information Wanted" ads, and offered religious reassurance to them: "the fate of the loved one" will finally be revealed "one day when time has ceased to be" (in Heaven), since there were countless "nameless graves scattered throughout the land" containing the bodies of lost family members.
[20] Thornton Copeland, for instance, was sold at a young age; an ad, placed 21 years later, asked to reunify with his mother – identified only by the name "Betty".
[23] Even if family members were reunited by accident, they would sometimes not recognize each other; Henry Brown, a former slave, told a story (possibly fictitious) about a young man, sold in his childhood, who accidentally married his own mother after emancipation.
[32] The Last Seen project, sponsored by Villanova University and Philadelphia's Methodist Episcopal Church, has digitized hundreds of family reunification ads since its launch in 2016.
[34] Forums exist online that serve the same purpose as the original "Information Wanted" ads, such as the Unknown No Longer project sponsored by the Virginia Museum of History and Culture.
[35] In these forums, posters engage in similar rhetorical practices to reunification ads: They both list all known biographical details of their lost families and request help in finding more information.
