By Paige Lambert

School textbooks are filled with events, culture and conflict that affected the masses, far from the students who study them. However, local schoolchildren will soon have access to history from their own back yard.

Research from the Ransom Williams Farmstead Project will be available online by February. The resource will include a free curriculum aimed at grades four and seven.

The project began in 2003 when a Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) consultant surveyed land near Manchaca for State Highway 45 Southwest (SH 45SW). During the survey, consultants found an old chimney, suggesting the need for more investigation.

TxDOT hired Doug Boyd with Prewitt & Associates, Inc., a cultural resources management firm, and historian Terri Myers to run historical testing and research about the area, to see if it was eligible for the national registry of historical places.

By 2009, Boyd recommended an archaeological dig, suggesting an African-American freedman owned the 45-acre farmstead site from 1871-1901.

Boyd said he wanted the project to be a collaborative effort. At the same time Nedra Lee, an archaeology graduate student at UT, was looking for a dissertation subject. Lee began working at the dig site and aiding in the research.

Lee said very little was discovered from documentary research. While the deeds were in Ransom and Sara Williams’ name, neither were on census records from 1870-1900.

However, the artifacts found shed light on the family. Myers visited the county clerk’s office and searched through livestock brands for that period. She then found an 1892 brand owned by Ransom Williams.

Days later, the excavators found the same brand at the dig site. 

“It pretty much answered the question of who this land belonged to,” Myers said. “We were pretty certain we were at the right spot.”

From there they discovered the Williams owned horses, were mainly subsistence farmers and raised five children.

Lee said her favorite find was the root cellar. Inside, the team found items like buttons, tools and ceramics. 

“Though they are typically hard to excavate, it had a lot of domestic artifacts from the family,” Lee said. “There was quite a bit that reflected what their life would’ve been like everyday.”

The project covered more than the physical property. Lee studied five contemporary African-American newspapers. Lee said it shed light about what was important to them and their struggles during that era. 

“The papers consistently showed the importance of buying land, education, and connecting families,” Lee said. “It’s almost like reading the basic steps of beginning life.”

Lee also contacted the Williams’ descendants to create an oral history about the family. Most lived in east Austin, where Ransom’s children moved after his death in 1901.

The team conducted more than 20 interviews, which were transcribed and posted online in March 2012. 

After a full summer of excavating, the research was compiled into a 700-page draft. It was reviewed in 2013, and will be finalized by February 2015, Boyd said.

As a result of more funding for the project, a school curriculum based on the report is also in development. The curriculum will be written to Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards. It will include two lesson plans, visual aides and teaching notes.

Boyd said the curriculum will fill the gap between major civil rights movements and everyday life in the twentieth century. For example, the Williams family probably had to find other grocery resources, since towns were still segregated.

“Those are the kinds of stories that aren’t often in our schools,” Boyd said. “So to really understand about this one family and what they went through gives a good example of what many African-Americans across Texas faced.”

All project materials will be available at texasbeyondhistory.com in February 2015. Boyd said the target date was chosen to coincide with Black History Month.

Lee said posting the reports online will complete the main mission of the project, which is getting the information out to people. 

“Frankly, it’s probably the one way people will still be able to access everything that was found in a really open and easy way,” Lee said. “It’s not just enough to get the site and talk about how important it is, but really that the information needs to be shared widely.”