Henry Tonks Publishes Feature in American Ancestors
History PhD Candidate Henry Tonks published a feature in American Ancestors, the magazine of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS), entitled “Of ‘Desdemona’s Struggle’: A Search for a Black Family in Civil War America.” He researched and wrote the article as part of a Summer 2023 Ph.D. Internship in the Humanities at NEHGS working on the 10 Million Names project, which aims to recover the names of the men, women, and children of African descent who were enslaved in colonial America and in the United States. The article uses research into a set of sketches, which depict a Black woman’s application for a Union Army widow’s pension, to explore the experience of formerly enslaved people during and after the Civil War. A preview of the latest issue of American Ancestors can be found here.