Each student transcribed at least five pages, while some completed as many as seventy pages.  Using a sheet designed specifically for this work, students kept track of their time.  I used this time sheet for grading.  Assuming the student followed my guidelines, twenty hours generally merited an “A”.  Several especially enthusiastic students documented more than fifty hours.

Within a short time exciting discoveries began to trickle in.  Several students had discovered sections that dealt with marital difficulties.  Many church members were runaway slaves who had left spouses in slavery, and then found a new partner on free soil.  This new couple often approached Union Baptist asking for permission to marry.  After struggling for over a decade with such circumstances, the Church concluded that if a man or woman had left a spouse in slavery and, after a sufficient period of time, determined that they could never be reunited, the freed spouse could remarry another person.

Numerous other similarly fascinating details also emerged.  Several persons had so quickly left slavery that they were unable to secure proper documentation, a so-called letter of dismission, from their church back in slavery.  Other persons made provisions that upon their death all proceeds from the sale of their property should be used to help purchase their children still in slavery.  If such purchase was impossible, the money should be given to the church.

One student discovered that Cincinnati’s most intriguing black antebellum figure, Eliza Potter, was a member of Union Baptist.  In her 1852 memoirs, A Hairdresser’s Experience in High Life, Eliza Potter described her service to the wealthy white families of Cincinnati.  Past research on Potter contended that she belonged to the white church of her employees.  Potter’s more certain membership in Union Baptist might help to explain her undisputed aid of runaway slaves.

Long before introducing the Union Baptist Church project, I had shared with my class stories about John Hatfield, a black Cincinnatian who was involved in the Underground Railroad.  Several well known antebellum sources describe the time he hid twenty-two runaways in a mock funeral procession that marched right through Cincinnati.  But little else was known about Hatfield’s personal life, that is, until my students stumbled across his name in the Union Baptist Church records.  Hatfield was a prominent deacon at Union Baptist, and, because of my students’ effort, much about his private life is now known.

Some students complained that their hours of transcription uncovered nothing interesting.  In some cases, that seemed to be true.  But more often than not, an apparently insignificant text contained clues that unlocked another passage.  Since I read all the transcriptions, I was often able to make such connections.

After completing the transcriptions, my work increased.  I began to scrutinize the work of the students, correcting numerous mistakes that only my trained eye could detect.  At this point I have finished checking three of the five antebellum books, and plan to have the entire collection ready for publication by the end of this school year.  Several university presses have expressed interest.

Students overwhelmingly praised the project.  They said it helped them better appreciate the amount and the type of work done by the historian.  Many students felt the excitement of historical sleuthing.  And all were proud to contribute to what I believe will become an invaluable source of information on early Cincinnati history, black life in America, and the Underground Railroad.  Throughout the summer several students emailed me asking if our book was yet available in print.

The Union Baptist Church’s Historic Preservation Committee also invited me to share the fruits of our research at the church’s one hundred and seventy year anniversary celebration scheduled for June 23, 2001.  About two hours of singing and prayer preceded the half hour that I was allotted for my presentation.  As I climbed the podium, I remembered that Pastor Yates had told me about God being with me.  At the same time, however, I also felt about five hundred pairs of eyes (along with extensive media coverage) staring at me asking, “What’s a white guy doing telling us about our history?”  I pulled out my typed speech from my coat pocket, and began with the story of my slaveholding ancestors. 

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C. Walker Gollar is an associate professor in the theology department.

Contributors to the Lesson Learned series have been selected by their deans to share their experiences in the classroom, describing a teaching technique or exercise that they have found to be effective.