ABOUT ME
Introduction
Angela Walton-Raji, B.A., M.Ed., is a nationally known genealogist with a unique specialty in Oklahoma Dawes Records, including all categories of people taken west during the years of the Indian Removal. In 1993, she wrote the first and only guidebook pertaining to this that teaches readers how to explore the records of the Freedmen of the Five Tribes—the enslaved people taken west on the Trail of Tears. An expanded version of her book was released in 2007 by Heritage Books. Since that time, she has expanded her Oklahoma-focused work to incorporate all citizens and Freedmen of the Five Tribes, including the many records that preceded the 1898 Dawes Roll era.
Her focus also includes military records such as the Claims of the Loyal Creeks, Loyal Seminole Claims, and the records of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Indian Home Guards—the only Native American Union Army regiments in the Civil War. Ms. Walton-Raji is a member of the Oklahoma Historical Society, and she hosts an ongoing Oklahoma-focused podcast called The Freedmen Files.
She has recently begun to explore the lives of women who worked during the Civil War in Indian Territory and is collecting data on that little-known topic. In addition, she is currently completing a book titled The Choctaw Freedmen & the Lost Ghost Town of Skullyville, to be released in the autumn of 2025 by History Press. Ms. Walton-Raji lives in Maryland where she continues to research and write.