This past summer, Vera Williams attended her annual family reunion and Solomon Northup Day. The day honors her great-great-great grandfather, Solomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped and forced into slavery in 1841.
When Northup escaped, he wrote a book about his experiences and—most shockingly for that era—took his kidnappers to trial. The book was recently made into the movie 12 Years A Slave.
Some of Northup’s experience is documented in Williams’s own workplace, the National Archives. Northup and his family appear in the 1840 Federal census under the category “Free Colored Persons.” One year later, Northup—now called Platt Hamilton—is listed in the slave manifest for the brig Orleans.
Although she joined the National Archives four years ago, she only recently became interested in the records. As an IT specialist, she was “thinking more systems not content,” she notes. But there may be more documentation of Williams’s own story still to be found in the National Archives.
The men who kidnapped Northup were brought to trial, but the case was dismissed, as blacks were not allowed to sue whites in the 1850s. With the help of fellow staff members, Williams is now hunting for these court records. Little is known about the end of Northup’s life—he disappeared, leaving only speculation about his death and burial.
Other mysteries remain. Williams is descended from Alonzo Northup, one of Solomon’s three children, but her family does not know much about the other two children, Elizabeth and Margret. “It’s one of my goals to find out what I can about them and share the information with the family,” says Williams.
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