John S. Christian, a day laborer, was 45 years old at the time of the hurricane. He was born in April 1855 in Germany. Christian immigrated in 1870 and seven years later married his wife Nancy, who was born in Texas in October 1857. They had six children: John (age 23), Mollie (20), Joseph (18), Edward (14), Bertha (19), and…
The Special Collections Department recently digitized and released the Julius Kauffman slave bill of sale. The receipt documents the sale of a thirty-year-old woman named Louise, an eight-year-old child, and a six-month-old infant. The sale occurred in Galveston on May 13, 1865, one month after Robert E. Lee surrendered at the Appomattox Court House and a few weeks before Juneteenth…
Hundreds of African Americans, mostly in Galveston, died in the 1900 Storm. The cataclysm wiped out entire families; as well, it claimed members of other families. Reverend Morris E. Terrell lost his wife and their four children. The Terrells resided in Galveston’s Ward 11 at 1510 15th Street (at the edge of the region of total destruction). Reverend Terrell served…
Diane Donohoe began volunteering in the Rosenberg Library’s Special Collections Department in March 2000, after retiring from a rewarding career in the legal profession. A passion for genealogical research led her to the Galveston and Texas History Center in the early 1980s. As an avid researcher she wanted to know more about her great grandfather, a French immigrant who was…
