Inside the research
Evidence Cases
A case is one person's file worked end to end: the family account, the records, the conflicts, the conclusion, and everything still missing. Cases are published only when the evidence trail can be followed in public.
Case 001 · BT-PER-00003
Laura Tolliver Smith
Laura Tolliver Smith was born about 1852 in Copiah County, Mississippi. Surviving post-Civil War records identify her as a formerly enslaved member of the family associated with H. G. D. Brown's Lucky Hit plantation. She later married John Smith and raised a large family. Some details preserved in family history — including a claim that she attended an institution called "Vicksburg College" and the family's relationship with Bishop C. H. Mason — remain subjects of ongoing research.
- Claims
- 9
- Sources
- 9
- Observations
- 46
- Family accounts
- 6
Case 002 · BT-PER-00001
Hilliard Taliaferro / Tolliver
Hilliard Taliaferro, later also recorded as Tolliver, was born about 1823 and lived through slavery and emancipation. Estate and probate records from Copiah County, Mississippi, document him by name as an enslaved person in the Taliaferro estate. Records later trace his transfer to Arkansas, his sale in 1856, and his association with H. G. D. Brown. By 1865, a Freedmen's Bureau register identified Hilliard by name as a formerly enslaved field laborer. In 1870 he is enumerated in Copiah County with Bettie and Laura, and in 1880 he heads his own household at Rose Hill Precinct in the same county — a farmer of 60, with Bettie and five children, Henry, Joseph E., Hiram, Sallie and Emma, and two grandsons, Hilliard Jr. and Leon M.
- Claims
- 22
- Sources
- 24
- Observations
- 44
- Family accounts
- 6
Case 003 · BT-PER-00002
Bettie Alexander Taliaferro / Tolliver
Bettie Alexander Taliaferro, later recorded as Tolliver, was born about 1837 based on ages reported for her in the 1870 and 1880 federal censuses. No record entered in this archive names her before 1870; the records made during her enslavement counted people without naming them. She appears by name in the Copiah County, Mississippi household recorded with Hilliard in 1870, and again in 1880 at Rose Hill Precinct in the same county, aged 44, working as a farm hand, with five children and two grandsons in the house. A citation carried into this archive placed that 1880 household in Union County, Kentucky; the page itself reads Copiah County, Mississippi, and the Kentucky reading has been withdrawn. Her parentage, the origin of the name Alexander, and the date and place of her death remain open research questions.
- Claims
- 10
- Sources
- 7
- Observations
- 11
- Family accounts
- 6
Attribution
Who is speaking on every page
- Source creator
- Varies by record — see each source
- Who made the original record.
- Researcher of record
- Amberly R. Carter-Mills — Founder, Creator & Descendant Archivist
- Located, transcribed, weighed and interpreted the evidence.
- Publishing archive
- BEFORE TILL: The Living Evidence Archive
- Holds the object, its identifiers and its revision history.