Washington and Lee is partner institution in enslaved peoples project

Grant funding is accompanied by Washington and Lee University’s joining On These Grounds.

With Michigan State University, Georgetown University and UVa, Washington and Lee will work on the project to design and test a data model to describe events in the lives of enslaved peoples gathered from historical documents.

Grant funding is made possible by the Mellon Foundation, according to a press release, and research into the university’s past is not new for the school in Lexington. In 2016, an historical marker was placed between Chavis and Tucker halls to recognize the enslaved peoples John “Jockey” Robinson bequeathed to Washington College. The difference now will be how the archival materials will be used.

“As more schools implement this model and genealogical and historical data is standardized, the more we will be able to establish connections across documents that have the potential to reconnect families across the South,” Lynn Rainville, Executive Director of Institutional History and Museums, who began work with the university in 2019, said in the press release.

Assistant Professor and Digital Scholarship Librarian Paula Kiser will manage the project.

“What was really exciting about this project was taking these archival documents and looking at them in a different way,” Kiser said in the press release. “The ontology we were developing and testing was about decentralizing the documents to break out what was happening in these people’s lives, creating data sets that help us better understand a group of people who were integral to our early history and community.”

Robinsons 1826 bequest of 84 men, women and children was a starting point for Washington and Lee’s team. From a research pool of approximately 35 archival documents, the project began in July 2021 and wrapped up in fall 2022 with the Universities Studying Slavery Fall Forum at UVA. Although grant funding has ended, the university plans to expand the site with more events, identify more documents and increase the scope with more individuals and a larger timeframe.

“This initiative aligns with the university’s goals and also shines a light on the intersections between Institutional History and Museums, the Library and student learning at W&L,” Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations Wendy Lovell said in the press release.

Kiser said the project enabled the university to better understand its history, while also demonstrating Washington and Lee’s “part of this larger community of institutions asking the same questions.”

“Being able to see all of the events that happened to one person in a single place, as well as the other people they were connected with, and not having to rifle through pages of documents, is groundbreaking,” Kiser said.