The Wanderer Project with April Hynes and Rev. Fred Morton

Join my special guests April Hynes and Reverend Fred Morton for a discussion of the Wanderer Project. This project is important to anyone interested in American history, and especially the African American experience. The Wanderer is the last documented ship to bring a cargo of slaves from Africa to the United States on November 28, 1858.

April Hynes’ grandfather discovered an African Face Jug on a construction site in Philadelphia in 1950. It took some literal and figurative digging but eventually April, a devoted amateur genealogist, traced the jug’s origins back to Edgefield County, South Carolina. The area is home to amazingly high quality clay and  pottery operations where many slaves, including Wanderer survivors, toiled making stoneware. The link discovered between April Hynes’ Face Jug and the Wanderer Africans helped to break down the so-called brick wall that frequently thwarts those trying to unmask the personal side of the slavery story. 

April Hynes is a Principal Researcher of the “Wanderer Project” and has presented at the National Smithsonian Museum, Boston University,  and has received grants from the Chipstone Foundation and Ancestry.com to further her research.

Historian Rev. Fred Morton is a descendant of Yango Lanham a survivor of the Wanderer slave ship.