Connecting With History Through Mentored Research

By APRIL FEAGLEY, Assistant Director of Communication

Nicholas Sifford ’23 s tood on the grounds of one of the first plantations in America gazing at the wide James River and pondering, alongside his Juniata history professor, their discovery of documentation that one of Sifford’s own ancestors had once been enslaved there.

What brought Sifford to the Berkeley Plantation in Charles City County, Virginia, was the combined excellence of Juniata’s mentored research program and Sifford’s determined multistate journey through dusty archives exploring the Sifford family’s past. In the process, Sifford forged his own future — an acceptance this fall in the Ph.D. History program with full funding at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Providing undergraduate research experiences for students in all disciplines provides early and active involvement in actively contested questions, empirical observation, cutting-edge technologies, and the excitement of working to answer important questions.

“I have documentation that one of my ancestors was enslaved on this plantation. We even knew something about what his role was there. It’s one of the oldest plantations in the United States, and you can tour it,” Sifford marveled. “So we were literally on the same ground, looking at the same buildings and view of the James River as they had. That has a lot of emotional power.”

Sifford’s research project, “An African-American Odyssey: Reclaiming the History of the Siffords”, left his mentor, Jim Tuten, Charles R. and Shirley A. Knox Professor of History, in awe.

“I didn’t have this kind of experience as a student,” Tuten said. “It was something that was primarily limited to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). We had internship opportunities at historic sites, but not experiences like mentored undergraduate research. And some of these experiences we can offer come from endowments. It’s among one of the most exciting outcomes from the campaign.”

That, of course, is the BELIEVE Campaign that spawned programs like the Schettler Family Summer Scholars, created by Paul Schettler, professor emeritus of chemistry , to provide funding for mentored research and allow students like Sifford to gain experience networking, working in groups, publishing and presenting their work, and forming scholarly partnerships with faculty that can last throughout their careers. Those research opportunities span all disciplines. The funding also allows students to learn how to write applications for scholarly grants and funding — vital preparation for graduate education and future careers.

Sifford, a Schettler Scholar, brought a lifelong interest in history to Juniata, where that interest grew under the encouragement of his adviser, Belle Tuten, Charles A. Dana Professor of History. Once Sifford made digital history his Program of Emphasis, he began to explore opportunities for undergraduate research.

Ultimately, he looked inward.

“Many African American families possess few written documents about their experiences. Instead, many have oral traditions passed down in their family across generations,” Sifford wrote in his application. “My family, the Siffords, of Allegheny and Washington County, Pennsylvania, is one such family. I proposed to use the Sifford family’s history as a window into the African American past by tracing the family backward from the present as far as written records and oral history will allow us to travel.”

The story of one family would highlight important trends in the history of the United States, illuminating the Black experience through generations of enslavement to emancipation and forward further still to the Great have documentation that one of my ancestors was enslaved on this plantation. We even knew something about what his role was there. It’s one of the oldest plantations in the United States, and you can tour it... So we were literally on the same ground, looking at the same buildings and view of the James River as they had. That has a lot of power — emotional power. It also inspires the imagination.”

Migration, a four-decade period in which six million African Americans moved from the Southeastern United States to the Northeast, Midwest, and West.

Taking inspiration from books like Somerset Homecoming by Dorothy Sprull Redford, Slaves in the Family by Edward Ball, and The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty, Sifford strategized the course his research would take.

“All of these books deal with individual families but explore the larger context of what people are going through,” he said. “This can’t just be based solely on my family; it needs to overlap with African American history and the African American experience in this country.”

A travel component was built into the project. Sifford and Tuten collected oral histories and researched archives in county courthouses and historical associations through site visits to Washington and Allegheny counties in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina.

“The first documentation of many African Americans by first name and last name, with their families, is the 1870 census,” Sifford said. “Before that, you’re at the mercy of however the slave owners kept their records.

So, depending on where your ancestors were enslaved, you may be able to connect them to an individual on a plantation, or you may not.”

Visiting the archives of the Library of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia, and the Charles City Historical Society, Sifford discovered his connection to an unusual part of African American history.

“I know from previous experiences that travel provides a valuable growth opportunity,” said Tuten. “A lot of information was digitized, and we were able to work with interlibrary loans and primary sources, but as a development experience, going to archives and doing research is energizing, exciting, and you find things you couldn’t have gotten any other way. It’s also a window into that aspect of doing research in the humanities and history in particular.”

In the Library of Virginia, Sifford was introduced to one of his ancestors, Charity, through the Last Will and Testament of Arthur Jordan. Charity was enslaved for much of her life in Colonial Virginia; the exact date and place of her birth are unknown. The date that changed the trajectory of her life and that of her descendants is known — January 3, 1698, the date she was freed upon her enslaver’s death. As their mother’s status determined an individual’s status, Charity’s children, including a daughter, Jane Mingo, born in 1702, were free. The family line, living primarily in Surry and Charles City counties, remained free through the mass emancipation of enslaved people in 1865.

“This community of free people of color existed, living surrounded by the system of slavery, but technically outside of it,” Sifford said. “It was a somewhat precarious living situation.”

The visit to Berkeley Plantation in Virginia gave the researchers an additional window into the past.

“The mentored research experience is a high-impact practice,” Tuten said. “Being able to see all that students gain from it is amazing.”

Sifford presented his research as an academic poster at West Virginia University’s undergraduate symposium, where he took first place in the Art, Humanities, & Design Category. He also presented at the 13th Annual Landmark Conference Summer Research Symposium hosted by Moravian University.

“A big part of this project was to find the little bits and pieces of African American history that aren’t widely known. It provided me a better understanding of the African American experience and African American history in general,” Sifford said. “The research that traces our family allows us to regain our identity as a people and empowers us with certain knowledge of our long past.”