RALEIGH – Warren Eugene Milteer, Jr. has been honored as recipient of the North Carolina Genealogical Society 2016 “Award for Excellence in a Publication Relevant to North Carolina” for his book: “Hertford County North Carolina’s Free People of Color.”

The awards were presented at the NCGS annual meeting during its Fall Workshop on October 29 at the McKimmon Center in Raleigh.

This book is remarkable not only because it focuses on a population often misunderstood and overlooked but also because the families Milteer researched live in a county which has suffered a great loss of its records. Prior to the Civil War, Hertford County had one of the largest populations of free people of color in the state. In an effort to discover alternate sources to Hertford’s missing county records, the author searched tirelessly in state and national archives; special collections at the University of North Carolina, Duke, and East Carolina University; and newspapers to build his study of the lives and accomplishments of these people from the colonial period into the 20th century.

The well written and well documented work was commended for its value in helping the reader understand the challenges and successes of these families and in giving descendants an appreciation of the social, economic, and political contributions their ancestors have made in helping “shape their community.”

Milteer earned a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and currently teaches history at the University of South Carolina.