it was locateded in the -- established in the 1880s by thomas and louisa harrison. after they married, thomas traveled to alabama accompanied by a party of slaves. he purchased several pieces of property in alabama and established this plantation, which is actually still owned by the same family today. what these records demonstrate is the difficulty you often encounter in reconstructing the history and story of individuals and individual families during slavery. the fondsale plantation there are thousands of letters diaries of the families that lived at fondsale. for the african-americans the story is not so well documented, but by using various documents we can learn a lot about the experiences of these people. for instance, what we have here is a bap tis malregistry from fondsale plantation and it records baptisms of enslaved people who lived on the plantation. for instance, if we go down here, in 1848 we find ann. ann was baptized as an infant. her parents were emily and her father is listed as sam, his full name was sampson. their full name was emily and sampso