The Elam children were educated at Fort Jessup. Later, Joseph Elam read law with his cousin John Waddill in Alexandria, Louisiana. In 1853, Waddill helped obtain freedom of Solomon Northup, a kidnapped man from New York and the subject of the film, "Twelve Years a Slave", who had been sold into slavery in Louisiana. Northup had been held for twelve years as a slave in the Red River region. Under its 1841 law, the state of New York commissioned an attorney to help find and free the kidnapped man.