Project Methodology

Overview

Free, enslaved, and indentured Black people lived, labored, and died on Dickinson family properties during the 18th and 19th centuries. By compulsion or choice, Black people made their homes and formed community ties on land along the St. Jones River. This website is dedicated to their stories.

The Plantation Stories Project began with five selected historic documents and has expanded to include more. The Plantation Stories Project team will compile additional sources, continue research, and update the website on an ongoing basis.

Research and Interpretation

The Project team is dedicated to a methodical approach, to ensure that all documents are interpreted as accurately as possible. The historical documents that inform this Project show a moment in time, a single instant in a person’s life. There are people whose names appear only once. There are others who are documented many times, listed in various documents throughout their life, as a child and an adult, or as enslaved and then free. People may not be named at all but instead referred to by occupation or assignment, or their names may vary from document to document. Throughout the research process, the Project team has found multiple people with the same name. When a person is mentioned in a document, their name and any other identifying details are cross-referenced with other documentation. When people with the same name are found, the team has worked to determine precisely which person is mentioned. Further research may show that there are even more people with the same name or that two different names are really the same person. The latter is especially possible in the case of nicknames.

Website Navigation and Categories Explanation

Every person named in the historic documents has their own profile page. All information that is known about an individual, to date, is shared on that page.

When sharing information in this way, some aspects have to be simplified. Take gender as an example: Gender was heavily enforced as a binary split between male and female in 18th century colonial society. It was reinforced through gender expression. Gender as a descriptor throughout the profile pages is not meant to disguise or ignore genderqueer, gender-non-conforming, or gender-expansive experiences. The Project’s understanding of Black people’s lives does not come directly from their perspectives, but instead from white colonizer enslavers’ perspectives. Based on the information from documents, an individual’s gender as listed on the website may have been determined by what clothes they were given, what pronouns were used for them, or in which gendered list they appear. Sometimes an individual’s gender cannot be assumed through context clues in the document, particularly in the cases of unnamed children, and is instead listed as unknown.

If you have any information about any of the people whose stories are shared via this website or anyone who is not currently listed, please contact us to share that information.

Plantation Stories Project Research Team

Meaning of Acronyms:
HCA = Delaware Division of Historical & Cultural Affairs
JDP = John Dickinson Plantation