When I started planning 2024’s Black History month content, I had aspirations of featuring a minister every Monday…because Minister Monday is catchy, right? Despite having a notebook full of names, I got really hung up on initials. Almost all Iowa’s late 19th century/early 20th century ministers went by their first and middle initials in newspaper articles as well as handwritten census and military records. I was able to crack the code of three ministers’ initials using records from Ancestry.com databases. Trying to figure out first names turned out to be pretty time consuming, which meant less time to research and create content. We’re not giving up: just resting and regrouping on this one.
TL Griffith
GH Woodson (George)
JOR Wimbush Maple Street Baptist
WD Venerable Keokuk
DA Holmes (Davenport)
FC Boling (Mount Pleasant)
MJ Burton (Keokuk)
MW Goodman (May Weather)
FD Woodford (Frederick Douglass) Burns Methodist
Black history research collective 