Book To Read

 I have a new book to read and I’m trying to read slowly which is hard for me.  The author is Lisa Wingate.  She wrote a book I liked about a family of children stolen by Georgia Tann and sold into adoption.  Her books are fiction but based on actual events.   This one is titled, “The Book of Lost Friends”.   It is really good.  I miss The Russellville Library and my friend, Jackie Blaney.  Jackie would have gotten this book for me.

Have you ever lost touch with an old friend and then find them again through...maybe Facebook.  Can you imagine losing your family and wanting to find them.  This happened to many in pre Civil War times.  Plus most of those searching could not write or read.  Many tried to learn to write with the main purpose being to find family.  A Methodist newspaper ran a column to assist these searchers.   The Southwestern Christian Advocate ran a "Lost Friends" page from 1877 until "well into the first decade of the twentieth century."

Two dollars in 1880 bought a yearlong subscription to the Southwestern Christian Advocate, a newspaper published in New Orleans by the Methodist Book Concern and distributed to nearly five hundred preachers, eight hundred post offices, and more than four thousand subscribers in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas. The "Lost Friends" column, which ran from the paper's 1877 inception well into the first decade of the twentieth century, featured messages from individuals searching for loved ones lost in slavery.