Mercy Olagunju ’22

My name is Mercy Olagunju and I am an alumni of Loomis Chaffee, Class of '22. For this project, I worked on the collection and organization of data for the interactive timeline, and using the limited data we had, I drafted the narratives of some of the people enslaved by Loomis Chaffee’s founding family. During the course of my involvement with this project, I learned what it meant to be an actual historian. I learned that a good picture of history does not come from what is well documented in books and journals, but rather, from the stories untold. Working with a great team of fellow historians, I learned how to spot the gaps in our collective history, and how to make efforts to fill those gaps. I learned to extrapolate information from the barest of sources, and figure out how to draw a picture of it. Most importantly, I learned to keep pushing, work through the blank pages and venture into the unknown. The unknown, silenced, and unrepresented voices speak louder when reshaping and reworking collective history.