Our April 2018 speaker will be Zann Nelson. She will tell us about the 1834 sale of 16 enslaved people of color by former President James Madison of Orange County, Virginia. His cousin, William Taylor, purchased them and subsequently moved them to Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana.

The program will touch lightly on the domestic slave trade while focusing more specifically on the effort by Ms. Nelson to identify the 16, learn more about their lives, and ultimately locate and connect with living descendants.

Covered in the PowerPoint presentation will be the numerous challenges, a few of the tools utilized in tackling the investigation and the status of the project.

Ms. Nelson is a researcher, writer and public speaker, president of History Quest, and a columnist at “Buried Truth” and “Zann’s Place”. She is working on a special project, The African American Descendents’ Quest.

Learn more about Ms. Nelson’s work at her website, www.historyinvestigator.net or at her Facebook page, History Investigator. She can be reached by telephone at 540-718-3465.