US Black Heritage Project Mississippi Team

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: United States
Surnames/tags: Mississippi black_heritage

US Black Heritage Project Teams
African-American Resources for Mississippi

The Mississippi Team covers activity for the US Black Heritage Project in the state of Mississippi.
Team Leader(s): Gina Jarvi (temp)
Team Members:

• Gina Jarvi - Primary interest: Mound Bayou OPS, and Bolivar County
• Dot Davis - Primary interest: Bolivar, Warren, Claiborne, Jefferson and Copiah. Special focus: Davis Bend, Mound Bayou One Place Study
• Suzanne Campbell Lowe - Primary interest: Attala, Madison and Hinds
• Miyako Jones, - Primary interest: Lafayette, Marshall and Union counties. The Pegues One Name Study
• Elaine Martzen - Primary Interest: Pontotoc County

Contents 1 Goals 2 Projects 2.1 January and February 2024 2.2 Cemeteries 3 One Place Studies 4 Mississippi Notables 5 Resources 6 Stickers 7 WikiTree's US Black Heritage Project 8 Sources

Goals

Our goals are the following with specific emphasis on Mississippi:

1. To collect in one place information and resources to assist in building and documenting African-American Genealogies.
2. To create the largest online public database of connected African-American families.
3. To bring together WikiTreers interested in connecting African-American families to the Global Family Tree.
4. To process all types of documents from Mississippi regarding free and enslaved ancestors with the goal of creating their profiles and connecting them to their descendants.
5. To provide and maintain a logical and organized structure to help individuals identify their ancestors and celebrate their history.
6. To improve all profiles of ancestors with Black heritage in Mississippi, which may include biography building, sourcing, and making correct connections.

Projects

• 1880 Census Project: US Black Heritage 1880 Census Project, Mississippi
• Locate and document all African-American cemeteries in Mississippi.
  • See Mississippi, African-American Cemeteries for existing profiles. The categories are broken down by county, then by cemetery, profiles and free space cemetery pages respectively.
• Search for profiles and create profiles for the top slave holders in Bolivar County.
  • See Top Bolivar County Slave Holders 1860
• Locate and document all plantations in Mississippi that utilized slave labor with at least 40 slaves, including developing profiles on WikiTree for slave owners and the enslaved found, and developing free space pages for the plantations and owners.
  • See Mississippi Plantations
    • Create the McGee Plantation (Edward McGee), in Pontotoc, Mississippi. See Louis Hughes, 30 Yrs a Slave
• Locating and developing profiles for Freedmen in Mississippi.
• Create One Place Studies for African-American towns and communities in Mississippi.
  • See Mound Bayou, Mississippi One Place Study
    • Profile creation stats: August 2023 - 390 profiles; October 2023 - 567 profiles; December 2023 - 705 profiles; September 2024 - 1,075 profiles
• Work on Connecting Mississippi's largest unconnected branches: US Black Heritage: Connectors Page
• Locate and create notables in Mississippi.
  The current (as of 1 Sep 2024) Mississippi Notables list is at 185. You can access the list here.

January and February 2024

The team will work on Jones County
Please follow the directions on the spreadsheet before creating profiles.

• 1880 Census for Jones County: COMPLETED on 23 Feb 2024
  
• 1880 Census for Calhoun, Quitman, Scott, Tishomingo, Wayne Counties: Spreadsheet

• • See also: US Black Heritage 1880 Census Project, Mississippi for other counties we have spreadsheets for.

Cemeteries

All 82 counties in Mississippi now have at least one cemetery category added.

• JONES COUNTY AA CEMETERIES
• Category:M.T.P. and S.D.A. Cemetery, Soso, Mississippi 8/313
• Category:Nora Davis Memorial Cemetery, Laurel, Mississippi 2/1013
• Category:Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Cemetery, Ellisville, Mississippi 1/167

• LAFAYETTE COUNTY AA CEMETERIES
• Providence United Methodist Cemetery (21/144 memorials on WikiTree, ~14.6% complete)
• Smith Chapel CME Church Cemetery (14/85 memorials on WikiTree, ~16.5% complete)
• Buford Chapel Cemetery (0/22 memorials on WikiTree, 0% complete)
• St. John Cemetery (6/121 memorials on WikiTree, ~0.05% complete)
• Saint Peters M.B. Church Cemetery (aka East St. Peter Cemetery) (6/209 memorials on WikiTree, ~0.03% complete)

• PONTOTOC COUNTY AA CEMETERIES
• Category:College Hill Cemetery, Pontotoc County, Mississippi 4/133
• Category:New Salem Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery, Troy, Mississippi COMPLETE

One Place Studies

• Mound Bayou, Mississippi One Place Study

Mississippi Notables

Jones County Notables:

• Leontyne Price

These folks need profiles created:

• Unita Z. Blackwell: first African-American woman to be elected mayor in the U.S. state of Mississippi; civil rights activist
• Medical Messiahs: African American Women in Mississippi Medicine, 1900-1940 There might be some women notables in here we don't have yet!

Resources

• African-American Resources for Mississippi.
  • African-American Resources for Pontotoc County, Mississippi
  • African-American Resources for Lafayette County, Mississippi
• How To Create an African American Settlement Page
• Natchez, Adams County, Mississippi 1886 Census South Suburban Inhabitants - Schedule A
• Mississippi, Wilkinson County Newspaper Slave Ads, 1823-1849
• The Plantation Families Of Lafayette County, Mississippi 1832 - 1865

Stickers

Along with the {{African-American Sticker}} you may also wish to add a Mississippi sticker to profiles.

Place {{Mississippi Sticker|born in Mississippi}} below the African American sticker if they were born in Mississippi. Place {{Mississippi Sticker|living=n}} below the African American sticker if they lived in Mississippi for a large part of their life, but were not born there.

WikiTree's US Black Heritage Project

• US Black Heritage Project
• US Black Heritage: Heritage Exchange Portal
• US Black Heritage Index of Plantations

Sources