Family History Workshops Held During Martin Luther King Day of Service in Philadelphia
19 JANUARY 2016 — POSTED BY
Attendees of the largest Martin Luther King Day event in the United States had an opportunity to learn about their African American ancestors of the Civil War era on Monday, January 18, 2016. FamilySearch, sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, participated in the 21st annual Greater Philadelphia King Day of Service. The event attracted more than 140,000 volunteers and included over 1,800 projects in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.
It was the perfect venue to share information about the Freedmen’s Bureau Project, an effort by FamilySearch to digitize the records of the freed slaves so that they will be searchable online.
“Participating in the signature project site for MLK day of service in Philadelphia is a one-of-a-kind opportunity,” shared Thom Reed, of Salt Lake City, Utah, who was there to represent FamilySearch and the Freedmen’s Bureau Project.
Thom Reed of FamilySearch and Lynda Tolson of Wilmington, Delaware, share insights on the Freedmen's Bureau Project.
Reed hosted an information table and taught several indexing workshops at the signature project site at Girard College, where an estimated 5,000 volunteers helped with more than 150 service projects, workshops and presentations.
Emancipation freed nearly 4 million American slaves, and through the Freedmen’s Bureau, the names of many of those individuals were systematically recorded and preserved for future generations.
To help bring these thousands of records to light, the Freedmen’s Bureau Project was created—it was a partnership with FamilySearch International and the National Archives and Records Administration, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society and the California African American Museum. (Continue)
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