As a scholar whose research focuses on the U.S. Civil War and its impact on civilians, as well as a Villanova professor for over 20 years, Judith Giesberg often uses databases and historical newspapers available through the university’s library. However, Giesberg recognizes that not everyone is able to access these resources.

To help share the information she found more widely, Giesberg was able to create her own archive focused on one specific theme: newspaper advertisements from formerly enslaved people looking for lost family members. Founded in 2017, this project — titled “Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery” — has digitized more than 5,000 documents on a website called informationwanted.org.

Through conversations with genealogists, teachers, and others who visited the site, Giesberg said one question always arose.

“The question they always have when we talk about these ads is, ‘Did it work? Did people find the family members that they were searching for in these advertisements?’” Giesberg told the Local. “[That] inspired me to see if I might be able to actually answer that question by following the evidentiary trail. The ads are short, but they’re packed full of clues.”

Following those clues eventually led Giesberg to publish “Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families.” Giesberg will be at Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion on Feb. 21 at 3 p.m. to discuss and sign copies of the book, which was published last year.

Founding the archive

Giesberg first had the idea for “Last Seen” while doing research on the lives of Black Philadelphians during the Civil War era. She was reading The Christian Recorder, the country’s oldest existing periodical published by African Americans, when she began to pick up on certain recurring themes.

“I noticed these advertisements appearing in the ‘Wanted’ section of the newspaper and I started clipping them because they seemed to be quite rich with genealogical information that I suspected would be of great use to descendants of people named,” Giesberg said.

Giesberg began accumulating these clippings — both newspaper advertisements and letters to the editor from people looking for family members lost in the domestic slave trade. Along with a Villanova graduate student, she worked with Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church to access their collection of The Christian Recorder.

“We started talking to Black genealogists about these ads, and what we learned from them is that this was a large phenomenon — not just one newspaper, but many,” Giesberg said. “From there, I knew I was in over my head on my own.”

To facilitate the process, Giesberg applied for federal funding. These grants helped her create a professional website to sustain the growing archive as well as produce a curriculum for teachers to use in schools. Although Giesberg received federal funding for the project, it has since been withdrawn. However, she remains committed to growing the archive.

Finding parallels

To write “Last Seen,” Giesberg compiled the stories of her archive into a narrative format for the first time. Simon & Schuster published the book in Feb. 2025, while a paperback edition was published this month.

Giesberg said she has done a lot of traveling and talking to audiences this past year.

“The audiences have found the book to be compelling and revealing,” Giesberg said. “We tell the story of slavery as if it ended when it was outlawed, and then we lose track of the survivors of the institution and the cleanup they had to do for the rest of their lives to try to put their families back together. This is a story most people don’t know. So when they read the book, they have their eyes opened to that story and how important it is for us to know it.”

George Boudreau, executive director of Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion, is excited to have Giesberg discuss “Last Seen” because of its connections to the museum’s focus — 19th century life.

Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion “has been very committed in recent years to creating programs that talk about African American history because it’s integral to that period of time. You can’t talk about the era of the Civil War without talking about slavery,” Boudreau said. “We’re especially proud because [Giesberg] is in the Philadelphia region and she’s using Philadelphia sources which might otherwise be forgotten or lost … She’s finding the voice of people who history said they didn’t count, and we now know they did. … I’m thrilled to celebrate her book.”

Giesberg said the reverberations of the stories told in “Last Seen” still affect many people today. For instance, the family separations mean that many Black communities still struggle to fill in their family trees. Similarly, the generation of formerly enslaved people that was freed was unable to pass along property or wealth.

“[There was no] federal effort to reconnect them with their families, or even an interest by white benevolence organizations to help them do this,” Giesberg explained. “Without that, people who did make their way, acquire property, or develop professional businesses were not able to pass that along.”

According to Giesberg, “Last Seen” is an important story to be told because of its intersections with American history and the lingering effects of racial inequality. It also can be compared to modern day immigration policies.

“We have seen a new, aggressive campaign of family separation that is happening in real time, and some of the way it’s being administered parallels this story I tell in the book,” Giesberg said. “We have federal policies that endorse taking children away from their parents, which is exactly what happened during the domestic slave trade.”

Judith Giesberg will discuss and sign copies of “Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families.” at Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion, 200 W. Tulpehocken St., at 3 p.m. on Feb. 21.

Maggie Dougherty can be reached at Margaret@chestnuthilllocal.com.