Reuniting with family was one of the first concerns of African slaves who escaped to Hilton Head Island. Slavery split up families, and owners could sell family members for profit or punishment. On Hilton Head Island and in other places where freedom seekers gathered, relatives found each other. Immediate and extended families moved into Mitchelville and began creating a community in 1862. Adults walked to their jobs in the town or at nearby forts, children went to school and shared what they learned with their parents, and elders helped by watching children and tending gardens. Mitchelville families dreamed and worked for a better future. Less than a month after the Battle of Port Royal, a reporter for the New York Times on Hilton Head Island wrote that families were constantly arriving together in dugouts from the islands on Broad River, bringing all their household effects and finding shelter at the plantation on the island they occupied. The San Francisco Bulletin on January 18, 1862, recounted that a man named David from Savannah found his wife Lucinda and his son Frank, who had been sold away from him and whom he had not seen in eight long years.