Hi all. I know that this particular topic may not interest most of you, but because it's about NC, I wanted to let everyone know. In addition to the talk I'm giving about apprenticeship records in NC on Monday, I will also be giving a talk the following week (October 17th) about free African Americans in NC before the Civil War. I think that on one level this is relevant to the Wilder's because I'll be talking about how these free African Americans fit into the larger scope of society. I've been working on a project for the past 5 years documenting free African Americans in North Carolina before the Civil War. For the most part, I'll be giving an overview of what I've found out over time and case studies as well. The talk will be in my regularly scheduled Southern US chat at http://www.genealogyforum.org (follow the link in the top menu to the chat room) on Monday night, October 17th from 9-10pm. This talk kicks off an open house that the forum is having in celebration of being online for 2 years. There will be special chats going on all week and also that Wed. is a research party! What is the research party? Bring any thing you need help finding (and anything you can volunteer to do lookups in). All hosts in the room will be there to volunteer to do lookups in various sources. I'm not sure how long the party will last, but we are also willing to help you out of the chat room if we run out of time. I will be there and have numerous NC resources at hand to do lookups in, including the full NC Civil War Roster. There are 15 volumes of this series though, and no index for all the books (each book has it's own index) so what I will be doing is taking down names and contact information and doing the lookups after the chat and getting back to folks with what I find. To see an example of what this series of books have to offer, go to my Cabarrus Co. website (http://cabarrus.ncalhn.org). Ok, I think that is it! Please feel free to contact me with lookup requests, but I would love to see some folks at genealogyforum.org! Erin Bradford eabradfo@yahoo.com List manager http://www.ncalhn.org ALHN County Coordinator for multiple NC Counties http://www.gendepository.com (the Genealogy Depository-Barringer, Black, Bradford, Coventry, Eller, Hackett, Hupp, and Kern)