Book Reviewed: Our Monongalia: A History of African Americans in Monongalia County, West Virginia by Connie P. Rice

The race and reconstruction in Mon County, WV In 1619, a group of thirty-two African men, women and children arrived on the shores of Virginia by the English privateers. They were kidnapped from the African nation of Angola. Thus, the migration of slaves started flowing into the new world. The first recorded African Americans in Monongalia County, West Virginia was in 1766, and a second group arrived in 1769. Part One of the book deals with colonial and early post-colonial period. Technically the slavery ended in 1863 when the state of West Virginia was born. The second part focuses on freedom and reconstruction, the legalized segregation, and the civil rights era. There were no personal diaries, letters, or legal documents of slaves or free blacks in Monongalia County in the early days of slavery, but part two comes from census reports, church records, school board minutes, and newspapers like Morgantown Weekly Post. Throughout the history of Monongalia County, African Americans have played a vital role in building and shaping the community. Both slaves and free blacks were among the first settlers of Monongalia County, and both groups contributed to the building of "Morgan's Town." Between 1770 and 1863, people of color never constituted a large percentage of the population of the county. The highest percentage was in 1820 when 4.45 percent (3.39 percent slave and 1.06 percent free) of the population was black. One of the interesting part of the history is the story of Henry Dorton of Clinton District. His story is the best documented among the free African Americans in Monongalia County. Dorton was born in 1748 near Bladensburg, Maryland, the illegitimate son of a white indentured servant named Anne Dorton and a black father. He moved to Monongalia County in 1790. He was a farmer and owned a substantial amount of land in the district. There are several grammatical and spelling errors, I wished the editor could have done better. This book is interesting to anyone interested in the African American history.