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Recovering Black History Reports and Resources
Recovering Black History of the Monadnock Region is a citizen-archivist project that began in the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire. Its lead archivist, Jenna Carroll, the Director of Education at Historical Society of Cheshire County, volunteers, and a research team at Northeastern University, are tracing the history of African Americans in the region from the 1730s to the 1930s. This collection includes presentations given by contributors to the project, as well as reports created from collected historical material about the city of Keene, which is in Cheshire County, New Hampshire.
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Historic Documents
This collection includes all historical material collected by volunteers, archivists, and research assistants as part of the Recovering Black History of the Monadnock Region project focusing on Keene, New Hampshire. Items include, but are not limited to: census, vital, probate, and military records, deeds, local histories, etc.
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Vital Records
Vital records are birth, marriage, and death records that are kept by governmental authorities, such as towns, cities, or states. They can record information about birth, marriage, and death dates, race, gender, employment, place of birth, parents, etc., depending on when they were created. We also should take a moment to consider the way racialization and gendering happens to someone immediately through this categorization on birth records. Think about the term mulatto, for example—it is a legacy of attempts to establish taxonomies of race, a socially constructed concept that has no biological basis. This all starts, and doesn’t end, with birth records and other vital records.
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Newspapers
This item set includes any records from newspapers, for example, the New Hampshire Sentinel and the Keene Sentinel.
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Census Records
Census records are state or federal records of towns and cities. This set contains records from 1773-1930. They can record information about birth, marriage, and death dates, race, gender, employment, place of birth, parents, school level, military enrollment, etc., depending on when they were created. Many of the early census records only record names of heads of household, but later census records provide information on all members of the household.
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Church Records
Any records created by churches in the region, primarily includes records of baptisms.
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Local Histories
Local histories include published histories of Keene or the region.
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Probate Records
Probate records are court records created after an individual's death that relate to decisions regarding the distribution of the estate to heirs or creditors, as well as the care of dependents, including items such as wills, bonds, deeds, petitions, accounts, inventories, administrations, and orders. Most of the probate records are involved at the county level. These records are primarily created regarding heads of household, but can hold valuable information related to the lives of other individuals that may be dependent on them.
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Military Records
This item set includes any enlistment, pension, draft, or related military documents and sources.
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Deeds and Land Records
This item set includes any material relating to land, such as deeds for land possession, maps or photographs of land, and probate records dealing with land possession.
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Other Primary Sources
This item set includes any miscellaneous primary source records, created in the long 19th century.
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Other Secondary Sources
This item set includes any miscellaneous secondary source records.