Eliza: Navigating Enslavement, Negotiating Motherhood

Eliza, a thirteen-year-old girl from New York, was placed on the Schoharie in 1818 as part of a Middlesex County Judge Jacob Van Wickle's slavering and sent to Louisiana. She joined other young girls and at least thirteen mothers of very young children. Eliza became a mother in New Iberia on Avery Island, Louisiana.

The Lost Souls Public Memorial Project is a non-profit that honors the lives of over 137 Black women, children, and men who were unlawfullysold during the domestic slave trade in 1818 by Middlesex County Judge Jacob Van Wickle of present-day East Brunswick. The project seeks to center their humanity and raise awareness of their stories.

Kristal C. Langford teaches Black Studies at William Paterson University and is the Public Historian for the Lost Souls Project. She appeared in the New York Emmy nominated documentary The Price of Silence and is a PhD candidate at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.