JOHNSTOWN, PA. Group uncovers black history

Their efforts are designed to bring in federal and state grants.
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) -- For eight months, the Johnstown Area Heritage Association has pored over old census records, tax rolls and other documents, unearthing the former steel town's long-ago and mostly forgotten black history.
Later this month, the group will detail their findings in hopes of attracting federal and state grants to keep their historical shovel digging. But state officials say the verdict is already in.
"They're really doing an amazing job," said Karen James, administrative officer with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. "It's really meticulous research, done from scratch in a lot of cases. They're way ahead of a lot of cities."
The local digging began after Michael Burke, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown who wrote his senior thesis on 18th century black life in the Ohio Valley, began working with the heritage association. Burke, an Americorps worker, was assigned to help association curator Daniel Ingram resurrect the city's black history.
There's not much readily visible today: a tiny cemetery and what's left of the foundations of a few homes from a black settlement on Laurel Hill Mountain, beyond the city's West End.
Book
But a picture is emerging in this city of 28,000 -- about 9 percent of whom are black.
Black settlers, maybe runaway slaves or simply squatters, began farming and blacksmithing and enjoyed some prosperity in the late 1700s.
Ingram and Burke found a book, "Four Years in Liberia: A Sketch of the Life of the Rev. Samuel Williams" detailing black life in Johnstown in the early 19th century. Born in York County, Williams moved to Johnstown in 1836 and had some success as a barber.
"I cannot say I was mistreated in any place," Williams wrote. "My word became my bond in business, and wherever I went, I met with a welcome."
"Until very recently, on a local level, this has been a very neglected area of scholarship," said Richard Burkert, executive director of the heritage association. "It wasn't until the past 10 or 15 years that different areas began to recognize this as an area they would pursue more."
Interviews
While researchers dig into the records, they're also trying to interview elderly blacks, some of them in their 90s.
"We still have people in their middle 90s who still are very lucid, very clear," said the Rev. Ronald Spence, a black Methodist minister who chairs the association's Black History Committee. "But most of this history, being oral, was never put in print."
Spence's late wife's ancestors were traced back to Johnstown's earliest black settlement, and each fact uncovered adds to the project's allure.
"Now the community's excited about it," Spence said.