Contributors & Resources

We would like to recognize the hard work of the people and organizations that have been integral to our ongoing efforts to make as many of these vital public records openly available as we can. Firstly, we would like to thank our community partners, without whose valuable contributions and insights this project could not have been realized.

• The members of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society for their ongoing volunteer and outreach efforts.
• North Carolina A&T University students Deshawn Elam and Joanna Martinez, who contributed to the project and promoted the project during an NHPRC-funded educational field trip. Dr. Arwin Smallwood of our advisory board and Deshawn represented the project in a panel at the 2019 AAHGS Annual Conference in Washington, DC.
• Dr. Charles Johnson of North Carolina Central University kindly provided consultation. Student Kyrie Mason worked with Wake County deeds and went on to enter the Public History program at NCCU. Dr. Johnson and Kyrie represented the project at the 2019 AAHGS Annual Conference in Washington, DC.
• NC African American Heritage Commission have kindly invited us to events that they’ve organized, such as the Freedom Roads symposium in Halifax, NC. We appreciate their assistance in our outreach efforts.
• The People Not Property Project student organization at Elon Law, for generously providing full-text transcripts of Guilford County deeds.
• The Department of Anthropology at UNCG provided funding for student worker Kaelyn Smith.
• Jessica Dame contributed our data dictionary and user's guide.
• Helen Hoban Rogers kindly donated freedom and slavery documents from the District of Columbia.
• Pam Gille kindly donated freedom and slavery documents from Overton County, Tennessee.

Student Research Assistants and Fellows

Graduate Research Assistants

Emily Senn and Arden Craft, both of whom worked on collecting and recording metadata from Washington DC. Arden also contributed editorial and review work. Megan Mieure.

UNCG

Iyanna Huffington, Haley Bowers, October Kamara, Jordao Blackwell, Destiny Alston, Jamila Taylor, Mya Gray, Kaelyn Smith, India Holloman, Marquise Merck, Anderson Rouse, Iain Nolen-Weathington.

NC A&T

Deshawn Elam

NCCU

Kyrie Mason

Volunteers

We have been fortunate enough to have many registered volunteers who donated their valuable personal time to this work. It is deeply appreciated. The more prolific contributors have included William Durant, John and Kristin Kellerman, Jennifer Ormsby, David Domelsmith, Maura Marini Shumake, Angenita Boone, Juliana Mish, Julia Gibson, and Phillip Gibson among many others. Nancy Merrick completed Cherokee County. Gina Roberts was instrumental in revising the original volunteer handbook.

Volunteer Resources

Before we can proceed to digitizing and transcribing the deeds, we have to find them! Different counties are at different stages of the location, metadata, or digitization process, which means there are different needs in each county. There are several things volunteers can do to contribute to the People Not Property project, and most of them can be done from any computer with an internet connection. When you sign up as a volunteer, you have the option of locating and labeling deeds, applying metadata to documents, image editing, or full-text transcription. Please contact the DLAS project team for more information.

• Volunteer handbook (PDF, 18 MB)