The SFASU Foundation, on behalf of the East Texas Research Center (ETRC), Ralph W. Steen Library, Stephen F. Austin State University (SFA), was awarded a Summerlee Foundation grant to research slavery in Texas through the lens of newspaper advertisements, articles and capture notices for runaway slaves. A $10,000 grant from the Summerlee Foundation supported the project. The ETRC hired six student assistants for 780 hours of digital research.
The students looked at newspaper issues from 1835-1865 in the collection of the Texas Digital Newspaper Program. The researchers reviewed 62.5 percent (4,735) of the available content, found 1,116 records and input their findings into a Microsoft Excel database. This research was then organized and added to the Texas Runaway Slave Project (TRSP) website, which is part of the ETRC’s publicly available digital archives. All the records found by the student assistants are now online. At present the TRSP documents 1,285 runaway slaves from Texas in 1,058 advertisements, articles and capture notices. Google Analytics data shows that students, scholars and genealogists worldwide are using the project research
