Slave schedules

Question

Many of my ancestors are mulatto with some of the father' being white slave owners.  I want to document this source info from Family Search but am wondering how I should do it.  

I am seeing the same slave schedule listed for each individual slave.  Should I document each source for each person or just post the one schedule?

Answer 1

If I'm interpreting the question correctly, you have a single source document that is applicable to multiple profiles.  I think the convention would be to cite that source on each of the applicable profiles.  With Family Search it's pretty easy, since they show a source citation that you can just copy and paste into the profiles.  If that source is something that you are posting to WikiTree as an image, it's not necessary to post it multiple times.  You can just post it once and then, in the image editing section, indicate all the other profiles to which it applies.

Comments

Thank you, Dennis!  I wanted to post the source to the profile of the slave owner.  I was trying to figure out if I should post the individual citations for EACH slave to the slave owner's profile OR just post the image that contains the info for everyone. THEN, I can link the image to other profiles to which it pertains.  I hope that makes sense.

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If you upload the image to the slave owner's profile, then under 'Edit Image Details' / 'Peopke & Things in the Image' you'll get a list of all the profiles on your watchlist, and you can just check off the ones to which the image applies.  If it applies to a profile not on your watchlist, you can just type in the ID to link to that.

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Got it.  Thanks, Dennis!  I appreciate your help!  :)

Answer 2

I don't know that there is a definitive answer for this.  Slave ownership in the 1850s and 1860s is complex, as slaves were bought and sold regularly (which you see in the Virginia Chancery Court records for example)

I have an interesting case in my niece's family.  I have been able to trace one of her lines back to slaves and a slave owner who were likely living in Danville, Virginia going back to the 1830s.

In this profile for Samuel Flippen, who was born into slavery around 1823, I have listed the slave schedules for 1850 and 1860 in conjunction with the 1830, 1840, 1850 and 1860 census entries for Thomas Flippen, the slave owner.  While I can make a case that Samuel likely appears in the 1850 and 1860 schedules, I am cautious because I don't have any documentation listing his name prior to the 1870 census.

I also include references to a Dira Flippen, who is listed as being 100 years old in the 1870 census and is living two houses away from Samuel Flippen on the record.  In the specific case of Dira, it appears as if she is in the slave schedules for 1860 and 1850, as there is a female slave who is much older than the rest of the slaves listed in these records.  I hope to eventually create a separate profile for her, but I don't yet know how she fits with Samuel:

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Flippen-22

So - anyway, I don't know if this helps, but the general guideline I try to follow with slave schedules is to try and use the limited specific information in the schedules in conjunction with whatever other evidence I have been able to find.

Comments

Thank you for your input, Ray.  This makes a lot of sense and I'm sure it will prove very useful to me.  I appreciate your help.

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I'm hoping to get some additional evidence on Samuel and Dira, as I just noticed yesterday that the Library of Virginia listed that it is in the process of digitizing Chancery Court records for Danville, 1842-1913.  While there are no guarantees that they will be in these records, I have noticed that specific slaves were sometimes named when there was a dispute over an estate.

So, going back to the slave schedules, if Thomas Flippen (the slave owner) had a chancery court case in the 1840s-1860s that somehow mentions Dira and/or Samuel, this will strongly support my assertion that Dira/Samuel appear in the slave schedules and census records.