This semester, being the first of my graduate studies, I had to make a lot of big and exciting decisions regarding my graduate assistantship and the direction in which to take my research. I ultimately decided to pick up where previous graduate assistant, Ryleigh Roberts, left off, but with my own spin on the area of research. You can read Ryleigh’s own summary of her work on the project here. My research is a continuation of the Griot’s focus on rememory, a term coined by Toni Morrison in her book Beloved:
“I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it’s not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place–the picture of it–stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don’t think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened.”
Lewisburg Cemetery, via Find A Grave
The overall goal of the project is to find historical locations in and around Bucknell university and document their existence and history. My personal research goal this semester has been to compile information on Black Civil War soldiers buried in the Lewisburg Cemetery. These soldiers were originally brought to my attention by Nancy Neuman, former president of the Lewisburg Cemetery Association, during a tour of the cemetery. There are seven Black civil war soldiers buried in the Lewisburg Cemetery. Nancy has kindly worked with me, by giving me an extensive tour and sharing files on the individuals, to help me compile information. I also spent time this semester researching in the Lewisburg Historical Society archives, as well as on digital platforms like Ancestry.
USCT Troops During the Civil War, via International African American Museum
My goal for this project is to create a blog with an individual post containing a biography for each of these soldiers, paired with a Google pin marking each grave. These components will come together to create a self-guided historical tour of the cemetery. Next semester I will work to format the blog and, after its completion, release the first episode of this tour. In future semesters, I hope to expand this research beyond the Lewisburg Cemetery to include other sites of interest to Civil War history, such as the Underground Railroad stops located on Bucknell campus. It was a pleasure to share my work so far at the Research Symposium last Thursday.
-Lily Hebda