1. What do you notice? What do I wonder?:
The ads stand out to me by showing how a mother is trying to look for her son, and how it was interesting how the newspaper in shown in Chicago and San Francisco. It was also interesting of how former slave families after the civil war, try to find their family members to become a family once again. I was also wondering how the mother may have felt about trying to find her son. I noticed that Mrs. L.C. Carter put her address so that someone reading the ad would tell her son to come to this address. I feel bad of how the mother and the son were separated from each other for a long time, it would have left their hearts to feel sadness. I have wonder of how long it took for Mrs. L.C. Carter to find her son, Fred F. Carter.
2. Time/Place:
The time the ad was published was in May 23, 1891. Which would have taken place 14 years after the reconstruction was finish. It also means that we are in the time when industrial age of America began. The time period was also when the Jim Crow laws in the south is happening as well. Mrs. L.C. Carter is living Chicago, where the the city grow during the industrial age of America. Meanwhile the son, Fred F. Carter is living in San Francisco, where it was also growing into a bigger city.
3. Conclusions:
In conclusion, we can see how years after the civil war was over, many black families are looking for their family members to once again become a family. Which I found very sad of how many families were forced to separate because of them once being slaves, but now they can look for their family members. The ad was posted 14 years after the civil war was over, I wondering how long it took for the mother and the son to reunited again after so many years being separated. https://answergarden.ch/1428606
http://informationwanted.org/files/original/2c5edf7ebf3fe5bc7d14229d18cf83a7.jpg
“Mrs. L.C. Carter searching for her son, Fred F. Carter,” "Seeking for the Lost" Information Wanted Ad, Appeal: A National Afro-American Newspaper (St. Paul and Minneapolis, MN), May 23, 1891, Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery, accessed September 21, 2020, http://informationwanted.org/items/show/3282.
http://informationwanted.org/items/show/3282
"What would you do if you saw an ad, would you help?"
If I saw this ad would contact Mrs. L.C. Carter to see if she could provide me with more information about her son, what he looks like or what he's like so that it would be easier to identify him. After that, I would try my best to spread the news and try to get as many people that are leaving by train or car to got to distance place, to spread the news about the search, to spread "Mrs. L.C. Carter is searching for her son." Hopefully, it would eventually reach the ears of her son so that he could know where to find her so that they could be reunited.
"What would you do if you saw an ad, would you help?"
I will do my best to help with the amount of information that I see on the ad. Since this is during the industrial age, a lot of technological innovations have been invented such as the telephone. I would definitely call the person who made the ad and ask them in what ways can I contribute to trying to find the son of this woman?
"What would you do if you saw an ad, would you help?"
While I would say that I definitely help. Knowing myself however, it would be extremely unlikely that I will be of much help. With the limitations of technology, finance, and the difficulty of finding one person out of hundreds of people, unless I am a person of big influence and power, there's not much I could do other than spreading the news and hope that it lands on the right ears.
Your question is really interesting! I imagine seeing these kinds of ads was a common occurrence for people, especially if they were reading Black newspapers with a wide circulation. I wonder if people made a habit of scanning them to see if they recognized any names, or even if they recognized themselves as the subjects of the ads. These ads must have served as a reminder of enslavement, of the war, and of the years immediately following the war. I'm wondering if anyone actively avoided looking at them because it was too painful to potentially revisit long-lost family members or memories.
To answer your question, "What would you do if you saw a ad, would you help?"
I would help if I knew where the person they were looking for was. However, If I didn't know who or where this person was I wouldn't help. The reason I wouldn't is because their isn't much I could really do, because technology was so limited then. Unless I was well known and could somehow reach a larger demographic of people.