159 years ago on June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas. This day is celebrated annually to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States.

Our Staffordshire and Slavery research project explores Staffordshire’s connections with the Trans-Atlantic trade of enslaved people. Hannah Smith, volunteer group supervisor and PhD student at Keele University, reflects on the project so far.

“After my last year and a half of research, I have found Staffordshire’s archive to be a great resource to explore how the county, and the UK, are connected to slavery and the slave trade.

The archive’s collection demonstrates residents of Staffordshire owning enslaved people and plantations in the Caribbean in the eighteenth century. There are also collections that demonstrate the ways in which people with Staffordshire links held colonial positions and were involved in the propagation and running of slavery. The experiences of enslaved people themselves can also be better understood. For example, in the papers of John Rhodes Hulme, who acted as a Stipendiary Magistrate in Jamaica during the apprenticeship period, the experiences and voices of the apprentices (ex-enslaved people) are particularly strong. This collection can be used to explore the ways in which ex-enslaved people resisted the new oppressive system of apprenticeship labour.

My research will show the way in which an inland and local archive can be used to explore connections to slavery and colonialism. I hope this encourages people to go beyond places such as Liverpool, Bristol and London when interrogating Britain’s links to slavery.”