While my group was in the archive, everyone found everything very interesting. Seeing all of the bills of sales and other information about bills and payments made by Henry Shaw were very interesting. It was also very interesting how owned slaves were listed under utilities I believe and that they were not mentioned besides that. I also thought it kind of irritating that when we were looking deeper into a folder, when Cullen opened it, Andrew got a little irritated that we opened it. Granted, these are old and fragile documents, but just showing us one out of many is not giving us all of the information that we want to get.
The most interesting thing about the archives were the bills of sale. It was documented proof that Henry Shaw bought these slaves and how many he had. The accounts of Shaw also hiring bounty hunters to get escaped slaves back was also a very interesting point. Shaw would go that far to get a slave back and that is just disgusting to me. The records of Shaw’s purchases were also there, and even though it said he stopped owning slaves at a certain time, it is also believed that he kept owning some slaves.
Overall, the archives was a veery interesting place, getting to see all of the past information in one room was amazing. I hope that we are able to work with the archives as well as getting information out to the public in the near future.
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