Misidentification rather than death explains Drana’s absence from the 1852 inventory

Evidence

But if we consider the profound insight as offered by Toni Carrier, that “Drana,” like many of my other enslaved ancestors, has been misidentified, and that her true name is “Diana,” then she doesn’t die or disappear, as Harvard surmises above. In fact, “Diana” is in both the Colonel Thomas Taylor and Benjamin Franklin Taylor slave indexes, grouped with Jack and/or in proximity with Papa Renty’s children. This was yet another example of the hubris of Harvard and the notion that only they can speculate about the daguerreotypes—only they can tell my enslaved ancestor’s story. They were wrong. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 795

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s stated aim: showing how genealogical reconstruction battles archives that were designed to prevent it — a misread name, not a missing person.

Related

• Harvard’s scholarship misidentified an enslaved woman, erasing her documented existence. (similarity 0.92)
• The enslaved woman Harvard calls Drana was likely misidentified and named Diana. (similarity 0.87)
• Harvard’s published research speculated Drana vanished between 1850 and 1852. (similarity 0.85)