On Monday, February 25th, at 6:30 p.m., Neta Jane Doris,
Winfield, will present the program “Exodusters in Kansas” to Sumner County
Historical and Genealogical Society members and guests at the Best of Orient
meeting room, 114 E. Lincoln, Wellington.
The meal begins at 5:30 p.m. and the meeting at 6:30 p.m.. There
is no charge for the program and everyone is welcome. For possible bad weather cancellation,
contact Best of the Orient at 620-399-8575.
When two of
Neta Jane Doris’s former high school classmates asked her to do their family
history, Doris was only too happy to help them out.
Doris has
been involved in several family history projects, found ancestors and
descendants for several, reconnected family members, begun family reunions, and
published a family history on her mother’s side of the family.
She was glad
to help her friends out.
“I’ve been
researching for about 40 years,” Doris said, “I just love the research.
Actually, when I’m researching, they almost feel like my family.”
Doris, who
did the bulk of this research prior to the age of computers, learned that her
two friends were not only the descendants of “Exodusters”, or African-American slaves
freed by emancipation, they were also related to each other.
“The more I
researched, the more interested I became,” Doris said, adding that it took
several months to find much of the information and expand their family trees.
“There were
about three years when there was a mass exodus,” Doris said, adding that most
Exodusters came to Kansas between 1879 and 1881 and many were from Tennessee,
Kentucky, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas where circulars were passed out by
both black and white people to entice the new settlers to Kansas.
Doris said
that the mass exodus “happened so fast and so suddenly that it caused a
Congressional investigation.”
“Over 40,000 poor black people emigrated
during that time,” Doris said, “they were kind of led to believe that they
would get money and land, and that didn’t happen.”
Doris said
that she will “speak about the general history of the Exodusters and talk a little”
about the people who settled in Kansas: one family who was involved in the Underground
Railroad, one family whose owner (and father) freed them and gave them money to
move, and Lutie Lytle, who became the first woman black lawyer in Tennessee in 1897
and was the first black woman to be admitted to the Kansas bar.
“Sometimes
families were torn apart and you never get them back together again,” Doris
said.
For those
genealogists and family historians searching for their own Exoduster history, Doris
said that she will bring along a copy of the circular used to advertise
settling in Kansas as well as books and articles, census and land records, and share
information on some of the resources that she used, and also how and where she
found the information.
According to
Doris, many of the citizens in Larned today are descended from the Exodusters.
“They were
some of the earliest settlers in that part of Kansas,” Doris said, “they showed
a lot of strength and determination.”
