Last Seen
The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People for their Lost Family
Last Seen follows ten freed people on epic searches for the loved ones they lost in the slave trade. Drawing on a unique archive of Information Wanted and Lost Friends advertisements published in African American newspapers after the Civil War, each chapter is a microhistory that allows readers to feel what it was like to endure separation from family and kin, to be sustained for decades by an enduring love.
“Her work engages the public in a manner and to an extent to which most academics aspire but rarely realize.”
– LYNNE HARTNETT, PhD
Author of Understanding Russia: A Cultural History, The Great Courses
Other books by Judy
Meet Judy
Judith Giesberg (Judy) is an award-winning historian of the Civil War era, Lincoln Prize finalist, and the author and editor of six books.
In 2026, she received the Outstanding Faculty Research Award at Villanova University.