Til Freedom Came: Slaves in Allen County, Kentucky, 1815-1865 - Tapa dura

For 50 years, slavery was a way of life throughout the southeastern United States, including the Commonwealth of Kentucky and Allen County. Much has been said about the hardships endured by generations of slaves, and the ensuing fight to live and thrive by freed slaves in the years following the Civil War, but there has been little genealogical information available on the slaves living in Allen County and their owners, until now.’Til Freedom Came: Slaves in Allen County is a detailed record of the slave era in the county from 1815-1865, with detailed charts and information listing the slaves by year, wills and inheritance records, states of birth, births and deaths in the county, lists of indentured servitude following the war, church rolls, slaves who fought in the Civil War, and more.Written to assist future researchers in their search of slave ancestors, ’Til Freedom Came: Slaves in Allen County is an authoritative guide to slavery in the region and an important resource for historians and genealogists alike.

Glen Conner served in the US Air Force, retiring as a Colonel after 23 years of service including a tour in Vietnam. He was an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Geology at Western Kentucky University, teaching Meteorology and Physical Geography from 1978-2000, and was the State Climatologist for Kentucky from 1978-2000.His interest in history began with weather and climate research, including an abiding interest in 19th Century weather observers and climate history they produced, and has written many professional papers on that topic. From 2005-2008 he wrote histories of weather observations at 24 weather stations for the National Climatic Data Center. Among these station histories is the History of Weather Observations at Newport Barracks in Kentucky, which began weather observations in 1825. Glen is a member of the Allen County, Kentucky Historical Society. His work with African Americans, who were attempting to trace their heritage, sparked his interest in the history of slaves in that border county, in the border slave state of Kentucky. This interest led to more than three years of research into the rich heritage of those slaves.The contributions of slaves from frontier days to the end of the Civil War are mostly overlooked in local histories, and genealogical information about slaves in general has been sparse; ’Til Freedom Came: Slaves in Allen County, Kentucky has been written for this purpose.