Nelly

The project team takes an organized approach to researching and cross-referencing documents, but it is important to recognize that not all gaps can be filled in. Though there are records that pertain to the lives of enslaved, free, indentured, and freedom-seeking Black Delawareans, they are often glimpses of a single moment and do not exist in a narrative format. Instead, longstanding record-taking and – keeping practices left behind documents that are primarily from the viewpoints of wealthy white people, many of whom were enslavers. The project relies on historic documents from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which were first saved by the people who created them, their descendants, and lastly an archive or repository for historic items. Black Americans’ preserved written record is not extensive, which has led to a lack of voices, anecdotes, and narratives directly from enslaved and free Black people.

The Plantation Stories Project team is reconstructing the stories of people whose lives have been marginalized and largely erased from time while actively working to circumvent, partially through acknowledging, the bias inherent in the documents available. Please consult the John Dickinson Plantation Stories project methodology to learn how our researchers are conducting this research. You can utilize and explore further documentation in the Plantation Stories Google Sheet.