By MAUREEN ELGERSMAN LEE
Before I moved to Virginia three and a half years ago, I started an intellectual journey unlike any I had embarked on before. The goal was as complex as it was simple: reconstruct the history of a small African-American community in a small city in northernMaine, a state with one of the smallest black populations in the country.
The goal was to understand why this black community almost tripled in size in the decades after the Civil War — and to learn where its members came from, where they lived and worked, what families they formed and what institutions they created.
While on this journey, I transcribed manuscripts of census returns that gave names, ages, occupations, addresses, property ownership, military service and literacy. I thumbed through countless high school and college yearbooks and found honor students, student-paper editors and band members. I read innumerable obituaries, which, in turn, led me to birth, marriage and death records. I even studied probate records — the final balance sheets of people’s lives.