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How to Research ~ Enslaved People |
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A BASIC GUIDE TO START RESEARCHING ENSLAVED PEOPLE |
| Slavery Research should not be done
until after you have done all of the research backwards in time from
yourself through your parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc.,
arriving at your ancestor who was born prior to 1865, and found first in
the 1870 Census in the U.S. That research is addressed in our document,
BASIC STEPS FOR STARTING GENEALOGY RESEARCH, which starts you off in
research. Once you have gotten to that point in time, you start Slavery
Research.
Please note that while we may refer many times to North Carolina, these instructions can be used for researching any of the States! |
| DON'T LOOK FOR YOUR ANCESTORS BY JUST
SEARCHING FOR PLANTATIONS!
There is no such thing as a one-stop place to look for Plantation names, although there may be pages where various such names may be posted, those are limited to only the knowledge of the website owner and what has been contributed to it. The NCGenWeb has a PLANTATIONS OF NORTH CAROLINA website which are from documents found in Slaveowners records, but be advised, it is not all-inclusive, and only has files for families which have been researched. |
| YOU MUST RESEARCH YOUR FAMILY USING
THE NAMES YOU HAVE FOUND BORN PRIOR TO 1865. And while there are a number of collections being called "Slave Records", it's a good idea to look through them, but don't expect them to contain everything you need. Not everything or every name or every record is included in any collection. Also when looking for slave names, don't expect that just because you find someone who happens to have the same name as your ancestor, that it is yours. Do further research to prove it. |
| Now, to get started: First look at the white neighbors living near your ancestors in the 1870 and 1880 Census, making notes of their names and ages to make sure that they would be listed in earlier Census. If there was a white family with the same surname as yours nearby, you should start with them, however, be aware that not all former Slaves took the same surname of their last slaveowner, although it's possible that they could have been related to their slaveowner. Look at the Real Estate value of the suspected Slaveowner families in the 1860 and 1850 Census, which would generally be anywhere over at least $500, but usually a lot more especially for larger slaveowners, this will help determine if their value sufficiently reflected enough to be a slaveowner. Also look at the 1860 and 1850 Slave Schedules for those same families to determine if they did own Slaves. You're not looking for slave names, enslaved people were generally not listed by name in Slave Schedules, they were only recorded by age, gender and color, except for a very small number of Enumerators who did include names, especially for those over the age of 100. In the Slave Schedules, you're looking for slaveowner names, which I suggest searching by Surname, County, and State, not by their full names, only because many Slaveowners were listed with initials or partial first names. In addition to that, once you have determined that your ancestors may have been among their slaves, start researching that slaveowners family, make note of who was in his household in 1850 and 1860, get to know them inside out, like you would your own family; learn about who they married, who their parents and siblings were, who the spouses parents & sibling were, since slaves could have come into that slaveowners possession through any of those relations. Remember Slaves came into possession from marriages, inheritance or through gifting or purchase by deeds, so once you've gotten to know the families of the possible slaveowners, look through their records for those types of transactions. Start looking for Probate records, which are Wills & Estates and other records concerning the property of the deceased. Estates are especially important since most include Inventories and or/ Distributions of property which name their slaves. Try looking for Deeds for the County, and Court Records, which are among the kinds of records to search through for slave transactions. Be aware that not all locations have these records available online, it may take visiting the locations or going to FamilySearch History Centers which have many records not available online. North Carolina is fortunate because just about all of their probate records and deeds have been digitized and are online. |
| RECORDS COLLECTIONS TO HELP IN YOUR
RESEARCH Remember, FamilySearch is free by signing up for a free account. Ancestry.com is a subscription service, but their Slave Schedules are free to use. Both offer many, many records which are helpful in your research. SLAVE SCHEDULES Slave Schedules aren't what everyone uses in their research, but one of the most important things about them, is using them to find your ancestor's slaveowners. It's extremely important to at least look in them to determine the possibility of a suspected person was a slaveowner, and as I explained above, the Schedules are the best places to look for actual slaveowner names. Slave Schedules can be found: Slave Schedules on FamilySearch: U.S. Census (Slave Schedule) 1860 Slave Schedules are free on Ancestry.com which are included in the U.S. Federal
Census Collection; scroll down to the 1850 or 1860 Slave Schedules: I recommend 2 articles with instructions on how to read Slave Schedules: Instructions on How to Read a Slave Schedule Census Slave Schedules - Use Them Properly and Tell The Story And also a very informative video which introduces the 1850 & 1860 Slave Schedules used in the USA. There are some tips and tricks on how to tackle these two schedules for researching their African American slave ancestors. Getting to grips with the 1850 & 1860 Slave Schedules (USA)
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| A huge body of work has been done by
Tom Blake, who has created a database of Large Slaveholders of 1860,
and compared them with African American Surnames of the same names in
the 1870 Census. Note, these are the largest Slaveholders, and be aware
that there were many many more who were smaller slaveholders and
therefore keep that in mind since the vast majority of Slaveholders held
fewer than 20 slaves. This database has listings by State and County. Large Slaveholders of 1860 and African American Surname Matches From 1870 |
| GET TO KNOW WHERE ANCESTORS LIVED. Online U.S. Atlas of Historical County Boundaries. County boundaries changed over the years in many States, so it helps to know where they were at any particular time. How do you find the correct county lines as of the dates your ancestors lived in a location and left records? With the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, you can view records on a per state basis, an interactive map, or choose the time slots that best meet your requirements. You can search by location or by time or by both. To use the web site for the first time, select a state from the map on the site’s home page to view all of the Atlas’ content related to that state, including shapefiles, chronologies, and metadata. If you cannot quickly find the information you seek, narrow the search by choosing from the available list of options. Probably the most useful option for genealogists is to display maps by dates. Start by selecting the State you want at the top of the page, and GO! https://digital.newberry.org/ahcb/
PROBATE RECORDS are usually found in
the County Courthouses in the locations where the deceased lived or died
in. They include Wills, Estate Records containing Slave Inventories,
Distributions of Property, Accounts of Sales, Hiring & disbursements of
expenses for Slaves, and more. You may have to read through pages &
pages of those records to find the info you need, but they can be
well-worth your time. Some of these records can also be found online in
Collections on both FamilySearch and Ancestry.com. Learn how to use
these collections for your research, don't just go there looking for a
name, do some reading about the websites and their collections, as well
as to understand what you are looking for.
Ancestry.com Probate Records are all in one collection, which is
mostly searchable. This is for North Carolina:
All Probate Records Collections on Ancestry.com
FamilySearch has Probate Records and Estate Records for most States,
generally they are not indexed, so can only be found using the Browse
features and looking through the Counties. Some States have separate
collections for Estate Records, which are indexed by Slaveowners names.
A better choice would be use the browse feature to go to the County, and
look through the Surnames lists for Estate Records. North Carolina Estate Files, 1663-1979
A listing by State, of all Probate & Estate Records Collections on
FamilySearch:
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| DEEDS are available on FamilySearch
in the Land & Property Records. Be aware that they are now
searchable as part of the FamilySearch Full Text Project and you can now
search
for records by following the instructions which are located
here on our site. Alternatively
you may choose the old school way on FamilySearch which is to browse through the microfilm records by first
using the Grantor or Grantee Index for each County, make note of the
Deed Book & Page number for the entries you want, then use that info
for locating the correct Book & Page in the Deed Books. Use the FamilySearch Catalog to get to them. You can find what records are available for a specific location ("PLACE" box), by simply putting in the county name, it auto-fills by bringing up the State & County which you select from, then SEARCH, and you get a listing for that County. Example, to see what records exist for Halifax County, NC, key in "Halifax", select "United States, North Carolina, Halifax". A listing of Halifax County records appear, click onto the collection of interest. Click onto the "Land and Property" link, scroll down to the collections where the Author is a government office (Register of Deeds, Clerk of the Superior Court, County Court Clerk, or NC State Archives); those showing an Author's name are books, most not available for viewing. Once the collection opens, scroll down the page to the microfilm, and click onto the "camera" icon; then click onto the first image to enlarge the microfilm. FamilySearch Catalog: https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog FamilySearch has a collection of records called the North Carolina Slavery & Bondage Collection listed by County which could be of assistance in researching African American ancestors, both enslaved and free. There is a separate collection for other States: Southern States Slavery & Bondage Collection Additionally, some of the North Carolina Counties have transcribed and posted collections of Slave Deeds both from the NC County Register of Deeds through the People Not Property Project, as well as those transcribed by contributers and included on the NCGenWeb County sites. So be sure to take a look at what's available in this compiled list of databases: North Carolina Slave Deed Index
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| COHABITATION MARRIAGE RECORDS.
After the Civil War, many Southern States had to rewrite their state
constitutions to make them comply with the Constitution of the United
States, and all of them had to pass new laws, acts, and codes to reflect
the new status of over 4 million men, women, and children who had been
enslaved for generations, but were now free. Most States passed only
general laws covering everybody, but at least a couple, North Carolina
and Virginia, had more extensive requirements. North Carolina's
law required that all former slaves register their marriages at the
County Clerk's office. Many couples reported their marriages with local
Justices of the Peace, who wrote down the dates or number of years that
the couple had been married, and turned those in to the County Clerk's
office, who in turn wrote down the dates that the marriages were
reported to the Justices of the Peace. Those dates are often confused
with the dates of the actual marriages, so one should always look for
the certificates as reported by the JP. These marriages were recorded in
1866-1867. Not all of the Counties have been found, but 54 of the then
existing 89 Counties were located and published in a 3-volume set by
Barnetta McGhee-White, "Somebody Knows My Name, Marriages of Freed
People in North Carolina, County by County". A few of the NCGenWeb
Counties have transcribed the Cohabitation Marriages, you should check
the individual County
sites to see if the ones you are researching are there. Cohabitation Marriages images are available on both Ancestry.com and FamilySearch. On Ancestry.com, Cohabitation Marriages are included in the searchable database, “North Carolina Marriage Records 1741-2011” Collection, which covers all of the North Carolina Marriages in each County, so be sure to look for images that state they are Cohabitation, Freedmen, or Black marriages when you get results in your search. On FamilySearch, following is a list of the Counties available there and also of those which have been transcribed on other sites. The County names on the left with arrows beside them, are linked to outside websites. The ones with FHL Film numbers, are links to microfilm on FamilySearch where you can view the County images. They are not indexed, therefore not searchable, so you will have to scroll through the County images to find what you want. North Carolina Cohabitation Records Virginia Cohabitation Marriage Records
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| ANOTHER AVENUE OF RESEARCH. |
| After the Civil War, when there were hundreds of thousands of newly emancipated Slaves in North Carolina, many of them moved to the Western part of the State with the hopes of finding jobs or some ways of feeding their families. Mecklenburg Co. became the hub of Freedmen activity where the U.S. Government arranged for plantation owners from the Deep South to contract with the former slaves for employment, in return for wages, food, clothing and shelter. There were many thousands of Freedmen who signed up for the jobs, most included moving their entire families with them to their new locations. If your ancestors were living in some of the other Southern States, but were listed as born in NC, it's very possible they may have been some of the men, women and children who were transported there as part of this program. |
| Explore this database with a listing of names of those who were transported and who they contracted with: |
| Following are Freedmen's Bureau Records on FamilySearch: |
| Freedmen's Bureau Records ~ Listings of all kinds of online Freedmen's records by type and by State; just to name a couple from the site are: |
| U.S. Freedmen's Bureau Court Records 1865-1872 ~ Searchable database |
| Freedmen's Bureau Bank Records ~ Searchable database |
| ADDITIONAL GUIDES YOU SHOULD VIEW: Records of Enslaved People ~ from the NC State Library Researching African American Ancestors ~NC State Library, for both enslaved & free ancestors Where Do I Begin? Getting Started with African American Research ~this 4 part mini-series from FamilySearch covers the basics of researching your African American ancestors If you use FACEBOOK, you can also get additional help and guidance for your research by joining I've Traced My Enslaved Ancestors and Their Owners
And remember, don't get discouraged in your research, it does take a lot of time and perseverance, and there will be times where you may feel like you want to give up. But don't, because it's not impossible! |
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Last updated:
October 31, 2024
Above information written by Deloris Williams for the NCGenWeb Project for the use of researchers. Feel free to use the information in it, but not to republish the document elsewhere without the specific permission of the author. |
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Contact: NCGenWeb African American Pages
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