Guy Weston, Family Historian

Guy Weston is an accomplished family historian. His primary interest in this area is pre-Civil War free African Americans in New Jersey.  This emphasis comes from his own family legacy, which dates to land purchased in 1829 by his 4th great grandfather that remains in his family today. He chronicled the journey of beginning this research in "Finding Free African Americans From the Antebellum Period," published in 2015 in National Genealogical Society Magazine. More recently, in January 2022, he published an article in New Jersey Studies, entitled  "Timbuctoo and the First Emancipation of the Early Nineteenth Century."  Here, he points out how free Black people  comprised a majority of the Black population southern New Jersey  as early as 1790, and how the history of Timbuctoo, settled beginning in 1826,  provides first hand accounts of what he calls a "complicated" freedom.  Further information about Timbuctoo can be found on his website at www.TimbuctooNJ.com.