Patrick Smith, like his brother-in-law William Roberson, found employment and success as a barber in Pana, Illinois.

A recent Perplexity.ai search led me to find letters written by one Samuel Bradley Wiggin, who had mentioed in one or more of the letters O.R. Singleton, the Mississippi lawyer, politician, plantation owner and slaveholder who signed Robert Jefferson’s freedom papers. A man who, despite serving in both the U.S. Congress and in the Confederate Congress, there seems to be little out there to find.

On Tuesday, Jan. 6, 1880, the Indianapolis Journal, published 4,500-word essay on prominent Black citizens living in the Circle City. Almost all of them have something in common with Robert Jefferson. For example, this first sketch tells us that Robert's friend and employer, Dr. W.C. Thompson, and Thompson's partner, Dr. J.A. Woodburn, helped Samuel A. Elbert become a medical doctor.

For about three years, I've had somewhat of a love affair with a man who has been dead nearly 140 years. And yes, my husband knows all about it. In fact, he has encouraged this relationship from the start. Robert Jefferson and I met when I first became involved with Historic Eleutherian College Inc., a nonprofit in Madison, Indiana, whose purpose is the preservation of a three-story stone building on a hill in nearby Lancaster. Built in the mid-1850s, the building consisted