US Black Heritage Project Ohio Team

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]
Surnames/tags: black_heritage Ohio

The Ohio Team covers activity for the US Black Heritage Project in the state of Ohio.

Team Leaders: Christy Melick, Amy Johnson Crow

Team Members:

• Ambar Díaz
• Carole Bannes
• Gina Jarvi
• Natalie Trott
• Hilary Mason

Contents 1 Goals 2 Projects 2.1 Current Project: Small Counties in 1880 Census 3 Resources 4 Stickers 5 Ongoing Ohio USBH Projects 5.1 Heritage Exchange 5.2 Slave Narratives 5.3 Connectors & Profile Creation 5.4 Data Doctors 5.5 Profile Improvement 6 WikiTree's US Black Heritage Project 7 Sources

Goals

This team is part of the US Black Heritage Project. Our goals are the following with specific emphasis on Ohio:

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

Projects

• Creating profiles for every African American enumerated in the 1880 census as part of the USBH 1880 census project.
• Locating and documenting all African-American cemeteries in Ohio, including developing profiles on WikiTree for persons found, as well as free space pages for the cemeteries.
• Documenting free people of color who lived in Ohio prior to 1865.
• Begin One Place Studies for African-American towns and communities in Ohio.
• Documenting families from the WPA's Ohio slave narratives.

Current Project: Small Counties in 1880 Census

Starting in Oct 2024, the Ohio team will be focusing on completing several small counties for the USBH 1880 census project. We'll be focusing on these three counties:

• Ottawa County, located in "<100" tab of this spreadsheet. As of 1 Oct 2024, 29 of 30 profiles need to be created for Ottawa County.
• Henry County, located in "<100" tab of this spreadsheet. As of 1 Oct 2024, 33 of 34 profiles need to be created for Henry County.
• Ashland County, located in this spreadsheet. As of 1 Oct 2024, 37 of 42 profiles need to be created for Ashland County. DONE!

As we work on these counties, we'd like to add any helpful resources found to the African-American Resources for Ohio page and create categories for any African American cemeteries, Black churches, etc. that we find. If you need help with this, please contact one of the team leaders (Christy or Amy).

Resources

See: African-American Resources for Ohio

Stickers

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

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

Ongoing Ohio USBH Projects

Heritage Exchange

Although Ohio never allowed slavery, many formerly enslaved people came to Ohio after escaping or being freed. Here are some Ohio profiles in the USBH Heritage Exchange, Needs Linked category - they need to be linked to their children (or their other closest relatives if they never had children), so that they can eventually be connected to living descendants. There are also a number of settlements of freed slaves in Ohio that need work.

Slave Narratives

• The WPA Slave Narratives for Ohio need to be completed. See Freedmen Narratives for Ohio. They should be categorized by the county where the interview took place (see Ohio, Slave Narratives category). As of Apr 2023, 39 of the 60 narratives have been done and only six of those are connected to the main tree.

Connectors & Profile Creation

The following links will take you to WikiTree+ reports with different lists of Ohio profiles that need to be connected to the main tree or have family profiles created.

• Unconnected Profiles
• Tree size one - profiles that have no attached family member profiles
• Needs Profiles Created maintenance category

Data Doctors

• Data Doctor suggestions for Ohio. See the USBH Project's Data Doctor team page for more information about working with these suggestions.

Profile Improvement

The following links will take you to a WikiTree+ report with a list of Ohio profiles in various maintenance categories.

• Unsourced profiles
• Need Sources
• Needs Biography

WikiTree's US Black Heritage Project

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

Sources