by Joe Miller,
Director of Development
“Hey, I’ve got a story to tell you.”
It was my first day back at McClintic Library after several weeks in DC. Librarian Pam Johnson spotted me from the stacks and hurried over. I knew what kind of story was coming.
In mid-December, Pam received a call from a woman in California who was looking for information about her family.
The caller had a name – Caesar Freeman – and a vague sense that he had lived somewhere in this area.
That’s when Pam began her detective work. She found a record of a slave named Caesar in an old Census record. She then tracked Caesar’s family to what became Greenbrier and then Pocahontas County.
Caesar began his life as a slave, but he and his family were freed – that’s the point at which he took the surname Freeman.
Later, the family, who had once owned Caesar, fell on hard times and attempted to re-enslave Caesar. The residents of Hills- boro were not having it. They helped Caesar go to court. Eventually, Caesar prevailed. He retained his freedom and was awarded 413 acres of land for his troubles.
That land included much of what we know today as Caesar Mountain.
Pam’s excitement was on full display as she walked me through the steps she took in tracking down Caesar – a search that included calls for records in Bath, Highland and Augusta counties, as well as to the Library of Virginia,
Tracking down Caesar was far from Pam’s first genealogy mission.
I took my parents to visit McClintic shortly after I joined the library team. Within minutes of meeting, Pam had helped my dad solve a long-standing family mystery – the year of birth of my great-grandfather.
The Roane County Courthouse burned in his youth, destroying the copy of his birth certificate. In later years, no one could agree on the year of his birth.
Once again, Census records held the answer. Pam knew exactly where to look.
Ever since, Pam shares all her genealogy missions with me. It’s one of my favorite parts of visiting McClintic.
Pam’s love of genealogy predates the current McClintic building.
“I helped carry all the books in the history room from the old library and cataloged the new history room,” Pam tells me.
Pam is referring to the special climate-controlled room at McClintic that houses the rarer and more fragile items in the Pocahontas County Library’s West Virginia Collection.
The collection is largely built from gifts – a patron left a sizable collection of books on his passing. Realizing that these books would need special care, the Sharp and McNeel families donated funds to create a purpose-built history room as part of the original construction of the current McClintic Library.
The collection continues to grow, sometimes through direct purchases, but often through the community itself. Patrons and benefactors have donated old family papers, books uncovered in grandparents’ attics and business records – all of which Pam lovingly catalogs and stores.
But it’s not just a room full of old books. A generous donation enabled the library to purchase a computerized microfiche reader. Now you can create new digital copies of old microfiche records.
(For the youngsters out there – microfiche is an old analog way of preserving information. Documents would be photographed, with the photos reduced to a tiny size and printed on transparent sheets. A microfiche reader enlarged the photos to usable size. Many of the library’s older records are stored this way.)
It’s Pam’s knowledge of the collection that is the key that unlocks their real value. If we don’t have the answers in our collection, she’ll track them down elsewhere. Where possible, we’ll add what she finds to our own collection. Right now, we’re waiting on the arrival of a short book titled Caesar Mountain: Slavery and Freedom in Western Virginia.
Pam’s prowess as a genealogy sleuth is well-known outside the library, as well.
“People just call me up,” she says. “They start by calling the museum or the newspaper, and they always tell everyone ‘call the library and ask for Pam.’”
Helping people make use of our history collection is the best part of the job, Pam tells me.
And of helping track down Caesar?
“It’s my favorite thing I’ve done this whole year,” Pam said.
