{"id":518,"date":"2009-11-02T07:00:39","date_gmt":"2009-11-02T12:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/?p=518"},"modified":"2009-10-14T17:05:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-14T22:05:00","slug":"slave-descendant-walks-in-ancestors%e2%80%99-footsteps-on-wessyngton-plantation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/slave-descendant-walks-in-ancestors%e2%80%99-footsteps-on-wessyngton-plantation\/","title":{"rendered":"Slave Descendant Walks in Ancestors\u2019 Footsteps on Wessyngton Plantation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Archaeological<\/a>

Archaeological Dig at Wessyngton Slave Cabin Site<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1991, I had an opportunity that few historians or genealogists ever have; to literally walk in your ancestors\u2019 footsteps.\u00a0 <\/span>In 1989 I was approached by the president of the Bloomington-Normal black history Project and director of the Midwestern archaeological research Center, about the potential investigations of the salve cabin area on Wessyngton Plantation to get an interpretation of slave life there.\u00a0 <\/span>Similar digs have been conducted at the Hermitage, Mt. Vernon, and Monticello.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The actual digging at Wessyngton did not start until 1991.\u00a0 <\/span>The thought of actually walking in my ancestors\u2019 footsteps and holding objects they used in their everyday lives one hundred years earlier was surreal to me.\u00a0 <\/span>Three sections of the slave cabin area were selected for exploration.\u00a0 <\/span>One site was where the cabin of my great-great-grandparents Emanuel and Henny Washington once stood.<\/span><\/p>\n

The dig yielded fragments of pottery and dishes used by my ancestors as well as coins and arrowheads made by Native Americans.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The photograph above shows the site of the archaeological dig on Wessyngton Plantation where my ancestors once lived. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1991, I had an opportunity that few historians or genealogists ever have; to literally walk in your ancestors\u2019 footsteps.\u00a0 In 1989 I was approached by the president of the Bloomington-Normal black history Project and director of the Midwestern archaeological research Center, about the potential investigations of the salve cabin area on Wessyngton Plantation to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,13,21,18,20,22],"tags":[10,223,152,12,60,573,324,216,146,322,45,190,205,212,8,323],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":519,"href":"http:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions\/519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}