Read sample
Follow the author
Judith Ann GiesbergJudith Ann Gi…
Follow
Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families Hardcover – February 4, 2025
by Judith Giesberg (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars (44)
3.9 on Goodreads
173 ratings
“[A] meticulously excavated tribute to the formerly enslaved mothers, fathers, siblings, and kin who published ‘last seen’ advertisements in search of loved ones stolen from them in bondage…a vital work of recovery.” —Ilyon Woo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Master, Slave, Husband, Wife
Drawing from an archive of nearly five thousand letters and advertisements, the riveting, “heartbreaking, and essential” (Jill Lepore, author of These Truths) story of formerly enslaved people who spent years searching for family members stolen away during slavery.
Of all the many horrors of slavery, the cruelest was the separation of families in slave auctions. Spouses and siblings were sold away from one other. Young children were separated from their mothers. Fathers were sent down river and never saw their families again.
As soon as slavery ended in 1865, family members began to search for one another, in some cases persisting until as late as the 1920s. They took out “information wanted” advertisements in newspapers and sent letters to the editor. Pastors in churches across the country read these advertisements from the pulpit, expanding the search to those who had never learned to read or who did not have access to newspapers. These documents demonstrate that even as most white Americans—and even some younger Black Americans, too—wanted to put slavery in the past, many former slaves, members of the “Freedom Generation,” continued for years, and even decades, to search for one another. These letters and advertisements are testaments to formerly enslaved people’s enduring love for the families they lost in slavery, yet they spent many years buried in the storage of local historical societies or on microfilm reels that time forgot.
Judith Giesberg draws on the archive that she founded—containing almost five thousand letters and advertisements placed by members of the Freedom Generation—to compile these stories in a narrative form for the first time. Her in-depth research turned up additional information about the writers, their families, and their enslavers. With this critical context, she recounts the moving stories of the people who placed the advertisements, the loved ones they tried to find, and the outcome of their quests to reunite.
This story underscores the cruelest horror of slavery—the forced breakup of families—and the resilience and determination of the formerly enslaved. Thoughtful, heart-wrenching, and illuminating, Last Seen finally gives this lesser-known aspect of slavery the attention it deserves.
Read less
Report an issue with this product or seller
Print length
336 pages
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Heartbreaking, and essential.”
—Jill Lepore, author of These Truths
“Love speaks across miles, decades and centuries in this meticulously excavated tribute to the formerly enslaved mothers, fathers, siblings, and kin who published “last seen” advertisements in search of loved ones stolen from them in bondage. Patience and Clara Bashop, Hagar Outlaw, Tally Miller, and the other seekers featured here may or may not have succeeded in having their beloveds restored to them, but the power of their loving, the spirit of their loved ones, and the immense scope of their courage breathe off the page in this vital work of recovery.”
—Ilyon Woo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Master, Slave, Husband, Wife
“Last Seen narrates the stories behind family separations and the indefatigable efforts of formerly enslaved people to find lost loved ones after the Civil War using thousands of “information wanted” advertisements in newspapers. Judy Giesberg brings to life poignant tales of hopeful (though rarely successful) parents, siblings, and other kin through her diligent research to trace the paths and flesh out micro-biographies of some of those who searched against all odds. This is essential reading for understanding both the cruelties of slavery and the resiliency of the generations harmed.”
—Tera W. Hunter, Chair of African American Studies at Princeton University
“The gripping stories of loss and love in Last Seen trace the journeys of slavery’s survivors in America who, for decades, tried to reunite their shattered families. By exposing the heartbreak of forced separations at slave auctions and the horrors of trafficking children, author Judith Giesberg brilliantly banishes the myth that enslaved people were content with their situation. Scrupulously researched, Last Seen is an eye-opening account of the long-lasting damage and disarray caused by the greed and cruelty of America’s slave trade. And the common thread in this tapestry of truth is the enduring power of hope.”
—Ann Hagedorn, award-winning author of Beyond the River and Savage Peace
“Last Seen is a powerful, wrenching, and necessary work that shows us how central family histories are to understanding American history. The stories of parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, desperately seeking and mostly not finding one another in the wake of slavery's violence reveal the indelible horrors of family separation. They also show that, rather than a recent or isolated phenomenon, family separation has been a recurring consequence of politics and policy.”
—Karin Wulf, Director of the John Carter Brown Library and Professor of History, Brown University
"Deeply researched and beautifully written...Last Seen illustrates what it means to search for someone or, in many instances, the loss of not knowing that you were being sought. Giesberg is delicately working through what can only be labeled grief. And she is writing to recount and restore the dignity, love and determination of restless souls. This history deserves to be read widely, taught carefully and preserved indefinitely."
—The Washington Post
“This unvarnished account reminds us that centuries of suffering have yet to be fully acknowledged or atoned for. Informative and sobering.”
—Kirkus Reviews
"A heart-wrenching work."
—Library Journal, starred review
“Groundbreaking…underlines both the lasting trauma of the ruthless shattering of families and the perseverance of the formerly enslaved in searching for their loved ones.”
—Wall Street Journal
"[Giesberg's] affecting book focuses on ten cases that powerfully illuminate the inhumanity of slavery."
—Christian Science Monitor
About the Author
Judith Giesberg is professor of history and Robert M. Birmingham chair in the humanities at Villanova University. She is the founder and director of the Last Seen archive, and the author of several books on Civil War history, including Army at Home, Emilie Davis’s Civil War, and Last Seen.
Top
About this item
Similar
From the Author
Questions
Reviews
Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families
Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families
Product details
Publisher : Simon & Schuster
Publication date : February 4, 2025
===
From the United States
Cat Johnson
5.0 out of 5 stars Regular folks will appreciate this little-known part of history
Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2025
Verified Purchase
I had never known that freed folks placed ads in newspapers with the hopes to find their people. Last week I ran across one such ad as I conducted my own family research in newspaper archives. This led to a google search, which led me to this book.
The early chapters cover pre- intra- and post-Civil War experiences by Black folks, to build a foundational education in case the reader lacks such knowledge. The author then typically devotes an entire chapter to each person who posted an ad, then follows that person via genealogical records through the years to tell their individual story.
I so appreciated seeing the actual newspaper ad posted by the person seeking family, placed under the chapter title of each new chapter. The author paints such a visual and visceral picture of each person. I became invested in their lives, had fingers crossed for each one to actually find their kin, and was so relieved when one of them did. The final chapters include the racism and unnecessarily convoluted challenges experienced by Black Civil War veterans and their widows, to obtain a meager pension.
Judith Giesberg handles such a heartrending subject with grace and gravity. Her writing style and word choice is simple, detailed, and easy to follow, to appeal to a general audience, so don't let other's high-brow expectations deter you.
I finished the book in two days and wished it was longer. It is still with me days later. I cannot recommend this more highly for regular folks who have a curiosity about such an important but neglected part of history. Kudos to you Judith, I eagerly anticipate whatever future histories you choose to delve into and share with us.
12 people found this helpful
Helpful
Report
Harriet Smythe
5.0 out of 5 stars required reading
Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2025
Verified Purchase
Everyone should read this book. Very engaging and very well written. I really enjoyed the book and would recommend highl
Helpful
Report
Scott J. Pearson
4.0 out of 5 stars Stories of family inspire by overcoming hardships
Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2025
Family is a bedrock of human civilization. After all, it’s where we first learn to care for ourselves, work for others, and socialize among each other. However, life is not always easy on families, and many eventually separate as time proceeds. Separation often takes a heavy toll. For those who suffered under slavery, dehumanizing conditions continually forced separations among spouses, parents, and children. On top of that, the Civil War caused a social upheaval that’s tragically normal for war zones. After freedom was granted, stability was hard to come by, and the end of Reconstruction only made matters worse.
In the antebellum American south, whites casually cast aside black pain by surmising that blacks did not develop deep familial bonds. Indeed, even today, one can hear similar sentiments casually made about the “weak” nature of black families. Judith Giesberg seeks to correct this mistaken sentiment by providing enthralling historical examples of how many blacks sought husbands, wives, parents, and children through newspaper ads for up to 50 years after emancipation.
The ads that Giesberg bases this book on are relatively short – a few sentences each. This book displays them at the start of each chapter, and readers can be excused if they find them unimpressive. Yet Giesberg plumbs them to an extraordinarily deep level. She finds other mentions of the seekers in the historical record; she empathetically explores the social bonds that drove people towards freedom decades after emancipation; and she provides historical context on both local and national levels to instruct. She weaves these approaches into a tapestry that realistically portrays the hardships of new freedom among a vindictive class of former white “masters.” She shows the deeply human longing and resiliency that undergird these queries.
Although Giesberg seems to extract all that exists about each of these brief narratives, high levels of detail often trump moving the plot along. That is, it reads like an academic history more than a gripping tale. This book could have benefitted from more of a central storyline. As it stands, it’s more of an anthology around a common theme and structure. The historical analyses are excellent, and she certainly enlivened my imagination about how enslavement oppressed many lives – and oppresses us still today. The stories of how much this “Freedom Generation” overcame will inspire readers for decades to come.
16 people found this helpful
Helpful
Report
Robert Davis Jr.
5.0 out of 5 stars arrived as promised
Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2025
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Good book
Helpful
Report
Joseph Hall
5.0 out of 5 stars Looking Families
Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2025
Verified Purchase
every black family in this nation whose ancestors were enslaved have lost families never to be found again and I am no exception.
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
Report
caf
5.0 out of 5 stars Easy read factual
Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2025
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
This book is very easy to read and very informative. It’s a great book easy read and very
One person found this helpful
===
'Last Seen': After slavery, family members placed ads looking for loved ones
February 26, 20252:37 PM ET
Heard on Fresh Air
Headshot of Maureen Corrigan
Maureen Corrigan
7-Minute Listen
Transcript
Last Seen, by Judith Giesberg
Simon & Schuster
In 2017, historian Judith Giesberg and her team of graduate student researchers launched a website called Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery. It now contains over 4,500 ads placed in newspapers by formerly enslaved people who hoped to find family members separated by slavery. The earliest ads date from the 1830s and stretch into the 1920s.
Giesberg says that when she's given public lectures about this online archive of ads, the audience always asks "the" question: "'Did they find each other?'" Giesberg writes:
I always answer the question the same way. And no one is ever satisfied with it. "I don’t know."
Giesberg's new book, called Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families, is her more detailed response to the question. In each of the 10 chapters here, she closely reads ads placed in search of lost children, mothers, wives, siblings and even comrades who served in the United States Colored Troops during the Civil War.
Sponsor Message
Giesberg isn't trying to generate reunion stories. Although there are a couple of those in this book, Giesberg tells us the cruel reality was that: "The success rate of these advertisements may have been as low as 2%."
Instead of happy endings, these ads offer readers something else: they serve as portals into "the lived experience of slavery." For instance, countering the "Lost Cause" myth that enslaved people were settled on Southern plantations and Texas cotton fields, the ads, which often list multiple names of white "owners" as a finding aid, testify to how Black people were sold and resold.
After Slavery, Searching For Loved Ones In Wanted Ads
Code Switch
After Slavery, Searching For Loved Ones In Wanted Ads
The ads that hit hardest are the ones that illuminate what Giesberg refers to as: "America's traffic in children." She writes: "Selling children away from their mothers was the rule of slavery, not the exception."
Clara Bashop's story opens Last Seen. Bashop had been searching for her daughter and son for 30 years when she took out an ad in 1892 in the African American newspaper the Chicago Appeal. Here are some portions:
I wish to find my daughter Patience Green. I have no trace of her since she was sold at Richmond, Va, [in] 1859. She was then 12 years of age. John William Harris my son went with some servants ... (after the surrender) ... He was 14 years old ... Both ... belonged to Dick Christian (in name only), by whom they were sold.
Sponsor Message
The language of Bashop's ad is direct and somewhat defiant. Giesberg comments on the words "in name only" that Bashop appended after the name of Dick Christian, the man who "owned" her children. Giesberg writes: "Against this legal right, Clara Bashop asserted a moral and emotional one."
Piecing Together Stories Of Families 'Lost In Slavery'
Author Interviews
Piecing Together Stories Of Families 'Lost In Slavery'
In comparison, Giesberg unpacks the language of a human-interest story aimed at white readers about Bashop's search. That story ran in the New York World newspaper. There, Patience is described as the "Missing Child" of an "Aged Mother" and Dick Christian is "a country gentleman." Giesberg writes that "white papers everywhere were publishing similar stories that threw a thick blanket of nostalgia over the history of slavery."
Another ad that speaks volumes is one posted in 1879 by Henry Tibbs, in the "Lost Friends" column of a New Orleans paper, the Southwestern Christian Advocate. It opens: "MR. EDITOR — I desire some information about my mother." Tibbs recalls being put in a jail with other boys prior to being sold away. "I cried" he writes. Tibbs says he was told that if he "would hush [the slave trader] would bring my mother there next morning, which he did; ... Mother then brought me some cake and candy, and that was the last time I saw her."
Throughout Last Seen, Geisberg steps back from these individual ads to give readers the larger historical context that made them necessary. For instance, she reminds readers that no federal agency existed to help freed people locate loved ones after the Civil War ended. Instead, there were things like "the grapevine telegraph," which she describes as — "a sophisticated system of ... surveillance by which enslaved people kept track of one another ..." And there were the ads, many of which were read aloud in Black churches. Those ads testify to the inner strength of people like Tibbs, who was still placing ads in search of his mother when he was 55 years old.
===
No comments:
Post a Comment