Macon’s Records Still Speak

One of the greatest joys of genealogy is finding a record that allows an ancestor to step out of the shadows and become more than a name. During a recent visit to the archives in Macon, Georgia, I came across an entry in a Bibb County Apprentice Book dated March 28, 1877. The record concerned a twelve year old Black girl named Lula Moore.

The county described Lula as an orphan who had been left without sufficient means for her support. She was apprenticed to Charlie Moore until she reached the age of twenty one. Under the agreement, Charlie Moore was required to provide Lula with food, clothing, medical care, and humane treatment. He was also expected to see that she learned to read the English language and was trained in what the document called “house service.”

Lula would have been born about 1864 or 1865, during the final years of slavery and the beginning of freedom. Her apprenticeship record provides a glimpse into the complicated reality facing Black children during Reconstruction. Emancipation had changed their legal status, but poverty, loss of family, and local apprenticeship systems could still determine where children lived and worked.

Then another record brings Lula forward in time.

In the 1910 United States Census for Bibb County, a Lula Moore, approximately forty four years old, appears as a widowed head of household. Her age and birthplace are consistent with the young Lula found in the 1877 apprenticeship record. Living with her were her daughter Ida, age twenty, and her son Willie, age eighteen.

Additional research is needed to establish conclusively that the two records belong to the same woman. But the possibility illustrates exactly why preserving local records is so important.

Macon and Bibb County have an extraordinary collection of records that continue to tell the stories of people who lived here generations ago. Court books, apprentice records, deeds, probate records, tax records, and other surviving documents can provide details that may never appear in a family Bible or traditional history book.

For African American researchers, these records are especially valuable. A single entry can provide an age, a location, an occupation, a relationship, or another clue that reconnects a family separated by time and circumstance.

Someone preserved that apprentice book.

Nearly 150 years later, I was able to open it and read Lula Moore’s name. And with each additional record we discover, her story becomes a little clearer.

The records were preserved. The ancestor was not forgotten. And once again, we can Let the Ancestors Speak.

Brenda A. Williams is a genealogist, historian, mediator, and researcher specializing in African American family history and the recovery of overlooked stories in Georgia records.