Wornall House staff uncover names of slaves [Video]

“It was so exciting to make these connections.” John Wornall House Museum Executive Director Sarah Bader-King said she was recently scanning endless spools of microfiche and accidentally ran across four names. “George, Jim, Allen and Nancy … we believe those are four names of enslaved people who worked on the Wornall House property,” Bader-King said. She found doctor’s receipts that listed their names and that the home’s owner, John Wornall, paid for their medical care. “The only people John Wornall would be paying for were enslaved people, and they were not listed as his family,” Bader-King said. Wornall owned a 500-acre property, which is now a reduced, but historically saved, parcel of land along 61st Street and Wornall Road. He also had slaves, as the slave registries of 1850 and 1860 reflect. “On slave registries, no names are listed, just age, sex and race. … By finding these names, we …