Hosted by Atlantic Black Box
Thursday, August 25, 2022 at 6:00 pm
Register here
Next up in our speaker series, genealogist Nicka Sewell-Smith will share her discoveries about the ancestors enslaved by MA residents
In late 2014, Nicka Sewell-Smith uncovered one of the biggest finds of her genealogy career thanks initially to genetic genealogy and later traditional family history research. The Trask 250 series amplifies the voices of the more than 6,000 people she is now connected to through DNA, community, and kinship who have ties to a defined enslaved community based in Adams and Wilkinson Counties in Mississippi, and Concordia and Pointe Coupee Parishes in Louisiana..
These extraordinary folks were or had ancestors that were enslaved by brothers Israel Elliot Trask, James Lawrence Trask, Augustus Trask, and/or William Porter Trask along with their niece Charlotte Pynchon Davis Ventress, nephew Augustus Trask Welch, and James Alexander Ventress.
The Trask family was largely based in Massachusetts but profited from plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana. Additionally, this defined enslaved community is uniquely positioned, as it has ties to the origins of Amherst College in the north and the University of Mississippi in the south.
