AFRO – President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Two years later on June 19, 1865 word finally got to enslaved Texans in Galveston that they had been free for over two years. Further west lived McMillan’s great grandmother, Vina Ross, née Elliot. She was born a “bound person” to a Quaker family in Kentucky which later migrated to Las Vegas, New Mexico. It’s highly likely that her freedom was delayed as well as those in Texas. She was born in 1853.
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