Genealogical society to meet April 20

The Sussex County Genealogical Society will meet at 10 a.m., Saturday, April 20, at Lewes Public Library and via Zoom. All are welcome; to request a Zoom invitation, email programs@scgsdelaware.org.

Speaker Syl Woolford will discuss the Lewis Family Papers, donated by the Albert Lewis Family to the University of Delaware Special Collections. In those papers were a set of documents that chronicled the buying, selling and running away of enslaved people owned by Albert Lewis.

Woolford earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration and accounting from Delaware State University and later a master’s degree in business administration from Rutgers University. For many years, he worked in accounting and sales with such firms as Campbell Soup Co., IBM and Sun Information Services. Most recently he worked for, and retired from, AAA MidAtantic in Wilmington.

Woolford said he didn’t develop an intense interest in history until after he retired in 2008, when the City of Newark published the book “Histories of Newark: 1758 - 2008,” in honor of the city’s 250th anniversary.

“They did a fantastic job on it, but left my family out," Woolford said. The slight stung a little, he said, but it inspired in Woolford a resolve to research his own roots. He started by simply searching family members’ names on Google, and searching online databases for historical records. He eventually curated a trove of information about Black Delawareans. He has since poured his research into PowerPoint presentations, and he has recently lectured to audiences around the state on topics including U.S. Colored Troops who fought in the Civil War, Methodism among Blacks in the 18th and 19th centuries, advertisements for slaves that ran in Delaware newspapers, the legacy of Howard High School, and Black patriots and loyalists during the War of 1812.

For more information, go to scgsdelaware.org.