Research Wish List

Although I already keep an Archives page of places I want to visit for research, this page is intended to list things I would like to see but don’t yet know where I’ll find them.

On Zebulon Ward:

  • Article about Zebulon Ward in Louisville Evening Post, October 22, 1890, perhaps from Louisville Free Public Library: probably concerns the charges that he swindled the city on a granite contract; Ward appears to have later sued the Post for libel
  • More evidence of what Ward was doing in the 1850s in Frankfort, and particularly any records about his farm or people he enslaved

On Henrietta Wood:

  • When did she acquire her surname? (See 20160630 - Speculations on a Surname.)
  • Information that can connect “John Terrill’s Daphne” in Boone County with Henrietta Wood (see Bullittsburg Baptist Church
  • Identity of father of her son Arthur H. Simms
  • Was she ever married? (Several records says she was widowed.)
  • Identity of “Cincinnati,” the interviewer of Wood in Ripley Bee
  • Information about “Williams,” the son of landlady in Florence who notified abolitionists about her capture
  • A slave manifest either for her journey south to New Orleans with Cirode or her journey to Natchez

On Gerard Brandon:

  • Original of the diary that I have the partial transcription of
  • Any plantation records the family may have kept

On Lexington-area slave traders, Lewis Robards and William Pullum or Pulliam:

  • The Fayette Circuit Court case records that coleman1938 used to show practices of slave traders and kidnappers in the area (examples include one Coleman cites as file 1280, January 12, 1853); some of these may be in Coleman Collection at University of Kentucky; others at KDLA

Miscellaneous:

  • George W. Hays, Reminiscences of Hon. George W. Hays from 1890 to 1929, compiled by Angry A. Smith and Lucia B. Keys (Cincinnati: Wm. P. Houston Printing, n.d.), 18-20 (see Phillip Swing for context)
  • Will for Captain Thomas Porter, who died in 1854 and may have assumed control of Tousey Family slaves upon Moses Tousey’s 1834 death
  • Anything connecting Omer Tousey to the sale of Henrietta Wood: did his father die intestate, and was Omer Tousey acting legally by taking and selling Wood and her siblings? could there be lawsuits against him in Kentucky or Indiana to recover proceeds?

Pipe Dream List:

  • Fayette County Circuit Court or Kentucky Appeals Court case file, with depositions and motions; this is likely impossible to find, for reasons described under “Archival Notes” on Wood v. Ward
  • The first part of Wood’s narrative in the Ripley Bee, February 20, 18791

  1. Have eliminated these archives as possible places: Western Reserve Historical Society Library (per email from archivist on 9/3/15); Ohio History Connection (per email from Tom Rieder on 9/5/15); Brown County Public Library (per email from Alan Kelley on 9/14/15); Union Township Public Library (per phone conversation with director Alison Gibson on 9/16/15). It doesn’t appear on the Ohio History Connection’s microfilm, or in their originals, which are apparently the most complete run of the Bee in existence.↩