Back in March the history and literary blogs were busy discussing the case of Emma Dunham Kelley-Hawkins, a relatively obscure writer often identified as African-American, but who may have been white, according to the research of Holly Jackson at Brandeis.
Jackson did not mention any trace of Emma Dunham Kelley-Hawkins (EDKH) in the 1870 or 1880 censuses, and I did not find any potential matches in the 1880 census database, when searching with the assumption that she was named something resembling Emma Hawkins.
Somehow my post on this topic gets high ranking in Google, so it has attracted some comment, including one that should get more notice (scroll down to the comments by Neil).
In 1870 EDKH was living with her mother, sisters and grandmother, after her father had died. Then in 1880, she was living with her mother and sisters. Because her mother was enumerated under her maiden name, Quincy, Emma does not appear as a "Kelley" in these censuses.
Emma and her family are enumerated as white in both 1870 and 1880. I will just reiterate what I wrote back in March, that always being described as white is good evidence of being white, whatever meaning you want to ascribe to "being" and "white."
Posted by robe0419 at October 3, 2005 10:16 AM