ways to connect Slave Holders to the Enslaved Persons they held in order to facilitate finding 1870 Brick Wall EPs? [closed]

Question

Since the categories needed for connecting Slave Holders to the Enslaved Persons they held in bondage still does not effectively exist,  I'd like to propose that we use the method put forward by the Beyond Kin Project: https://beyondkin.org/

Thoughts?

Shira

Comments

Visited the link. It will take some time to read it ... But so far this caught my interest:

"We recommend that any attempts to create Beyond Kin links between slaveholders (SHs) and their enslaved persons (EPs) begin with the SH’s record and work outward, given that most records of use will be associated more directly with the SH’s family."

Maybe instead of being limited to categories ... one work-around on WikiTree would be to use images:

• upload an image of the record identifying EPs onto the SH's profile. 
• Then connect the photo to either a Space page listing out the people in the record and/or regular Profile pages for each person. ... 

The image then becomes the main holding web page to link everyone together ... >>  WikITree's profile image pages don't have a field to link category pages, but they do for Profiles and Space pages. 

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Hi, Bree!

I did create a Wills and Testaments ... space page precisely for that purpose, but it seemed that no one could ever find it.  I think you're right, that the image links everyone together, much like they are doing on BeyondKin.  It'd be nice if we could standardize as the BKP does on naming conventions and the logo, since folks searching across the web could then collaborate.  It really all depends on the families of Slave Holders being willing to allow the links to be placed on the profiles of their ancestors who actually hold the Enslaved Persons in bondage.  Without that, we cannot trace back to see the groups and locations to find prior or later sales or other records.

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If the net can come up w/ a defacto way of standardizing naming conventions and be happy about it ... I'm all for it.

As for editing ... if it's a public profile, it shouldn't be an issue on a one-world-tree.

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A few years ago, I wanted to do something like Beyond Kin proposes. But I think the related project hit brain-freeze. 

Can't remember ... but we talked about it here on G2G. 

In general, I think the idea would work well in cases like Belair Mansion (see https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hill-11208 ). 

• Example: Cser of Belair (use Belair for LNAB, then CLN could be "of Belair Mansion")

Essentially, the proposed standard is similar to European "Houses," so it wouldn't really be reinventing a wheel on-site.

However ... it doesn't account for the problem of how slaves were bequeathed in wills or sold to other SH. ... That might have been the reason for the brain freeze.

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BKP Naming conventions:

https://beyondkin.org/beyond-kin-naming-conventions/

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Wills, etc:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U74FM0ac6U0&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR11eHAGN9LiFb5heQ1T8KsWDKFxibGnF1oEAzTLoFppMZXTtSn_vk9YS1M

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Hi Shira:

I am all for this!

I would also love to see WikiTree consider adopting the software development recommendations for long-term development.  (Although I realize that is probably a big ask for a lean organization).  Beyond the need to better incorporate enslaved persons in WikiTree (which is reason enough), the BeyondKin methodology of tracking non-family connections is the way to break through any brickwall.

I love WikiTree and have invested a lot of time, but if there were an option that became available that truly supported BeyondKin methodology, I would move my energy there.

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Likewise!

The BK methodology requires a bit of an up-front investment wrt the learning curve, but can be implemented in any family tree s/w, as long as everyone agrees to use the same naming and "spouse" creation conventions.

It's just a matter of getting the BKP methodology adopted as a convention by the WikiLeadership, I believe.

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Looks very interesting! I hope WT comes up with an effective solution!  Maybe you can add more tags to your Q, like Policy, or even Proposal? (not sure of all the tag options/ meanings) Thank you for sharing this, I hadn't heard of it. I have now started my first BeyondKin grouping on Ancestry.com.

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Good idea: looking for policy tags to retag...

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While I don't see anything inherently wrong in the BeyondKin approach, is there any consensus among the various national /regional African-American genealogy and research societies on how to name and organize such groupings? I didn't see anything but then I don't do research in this area. The couple of class sessions I've been in on the topic never discussed it. Anyway, I would think some further research is needed in order to settle on a scheme that works broadly in the event that there are any others. Parentheses in names could be an issue.

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The BKP is using the current standard in naming conventions, which agrees with projects like the Georgetown Memory Project and other African-American genealogy and research societies.

I agree that parentheses in names could be an issue with our database, but we can certainly find a work-around for that.

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Great. The proposed naming would seem to be roughly similar to the Native American naming where the LNAB is the tribe name. The big difference is potentially needing to change LNAB as more records are found.

Categories could help here but would need a well thought out structure that is documented and reviewed.

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Actually, the LNAB never changes, since each record/document is a virtual spouse or virtual child of the location in which the document was found. 

New documents become either new children at the current location, or children of new spouses:  no need for parenthesis, as the  LNAB (shown on the BKP in parens) is the SHname+location, i.e. JN Mayberry Plantation) as shown in  https://beyondkin.org/creating-beyond-kin-links-with-existing-software/.  

Use of the BKP method would allow us to connect up with many other researchers working on this common goal.

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The problem I see with this approach is that it would violate WikiTree's intent to only have real people represented. Creating virtual people would go against that. At least if implemented using Profiles. Categories might allow this type of structure a bit better than creating non-existent people.

Definitely a lot more thought and discussion will be necessary.

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Replying to your comment to tie it in to questions about how to use BKPmethodology for LNAB...

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The BKP methodolgy works fine if you have the plantation name - and if you don't? I have very distant cousins (via DNA matches) who seemed to be slave holders tovarying degress (ie nos). But I only know that they lived for example in Edgcombe Co North Carolina. Similarly I have found records of enslaved people who appear to have been "owned" by closer relatives, in Trelawney parish Jamaica. But there were hundreds of estates/plantations n Trelawney. It has to be both consistent with other databases  and flexible enough to record scant information.

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Wikitree now has its own system, as of 2022- called the Heritage Exchange Program. Info is near the top of this page - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:US_Black_Heritage

Answer 1

One of the keys to promoting genealogy of enslaved persons and their descendants is changing our attitudes toward the genealogy of the slave holders.

While looking for a different John Bayne, I came across a very well-written Maryland State Archives biography of John H. Bayne, Slaveholder, Prince George's County, Maryland.   I checked and we do indeed have a WikiTree profile for the same person -- Bayne-387.  

The WikiTree profile names John Henry Bayne's parents, spouse and children -- but nothing about enslaved persons.  It gives links at the bottom to Find-A-Grave, which has neither sources nor slaves, and also to Mike Marshall's Early Colonial Settlers sites, which provides several documents naming Bayne, but you can't tell from his abstracts whether any of the documents name enslaved persons or not.

And yet the MSA article is written from the perspective that while Bayne was a prominent person in the community and a physician, he was most noteworthy as a slaveholder, and for the troubles he had with enslaved persons who were unhappy about being enslaved, including a 14 year old enslaved girl who was so angry about it that she murdered a couple of Bayne's children and was herself subsequently tried and hanged.

When we do pre-1865 genealogy in the American slave states -- and Maryland was one of them -- it's important to document the slaveholding experience of the people we profile, even though it may take more digging than we need to do to capture their immediate family.  

The Maryland State Archives article -- click on the link in this note to read it -- is well researched with inline citations and well-written, and names all of Bayne's enslaved persons, providing details of how they came to the attention of the various documents they are in.  

There are discussions elsewhere about what kinds of information we need to include in a WikiTree biography.  When we write up a European king, do we really need to go into detail about all the wars he fought and the strategies involved?  Or should we stick to the family relationships and leave the rest to historians to describe elsewhere?  The same discussion could happen here -- is the account of the enslaved persons in John Henry Bayne's household and estate really part of what his genealogical write-up should have?  In the case of kings, the battles are well-written up elsewhere.  In the case of slave-holders, if we don't write it up in their biographies, the information just won't be seen.  Enslaved persons were not furniture, which we can ignore although listed in wills and probate, and they were not battles, described elsewhere.  In some ways, they were members of John Henry Bayne's household; Beyond Kin suggests they should somehow be treated genealogically almost like children.  Whether we see them that way or not, they should be part of each applicable biography.  

One approach that would link the enslaved persons to the slave holder would be to create a free-space profile and a category for the Salubria Plantation where Bayne and the enslaved persons lived.  This would be a "property" and not a "location" category so as not to interfere with the hierarchy or location categories for the area, but the Salubria category would be applied to all persons, enslaved and free, associated with the property, and the attached free-space profile could include all the documents and discussion identifying the enslaved persons there.  

Comments

I agree that if the descendants aren't willing to list the slaves on the profile, then a space page regarding their plantation or documents of "slave property" and sales should most definitely without question be referenced and linked somewhere in the profile biography. Categories can also help tie it all together. I don't think hiding or holding this information hostage is an option any more and the issue is going to have to be faced head on.

But a lot of the issue is it hasn't been easy to tie everyone together. Having a systematic way of doing this will go a long way to helping people provide the information as they come across it.  We'll be working on it!

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"if we don't write it up in their biographies, the information just won't be seen."

Exactly.

Many, many thank...

Shira

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But, Emma, what do you do with people who threaten to destroy the information?  We've had that happen here.

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One way to protect information, such as a document naming several enslaved persons and the slave holder, would be to put the document on a free-space profile.  While a person-profile over a hundred years old must be open to editing by others, a free-space profile can be restricted.  The free-space profile could in turn be linked to the slave holder's profile and the profiles of the named enslaved persons.

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Shira, if someone has information that isn't found anywhere else, there's nothing we can do about that. We have no recourse against someone who behaves in such a way. It's a sad fact.

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Having found mention in the wills of an ancestor in Virginia and another in Maryland, I have added the slave_owner category.  When there are no names mentioned, doing so suggests further research of the person may provide names - and a place to search in documented records for ancestors.

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That's great, Mary and does help!

Answer 2

It looks like BeyondKin is promoting a systems theory approach to researching enslaved people.  I tried something similar with some success.  It was very good at tracing people leased as slave labor.  

From a software perspective, spaces might be a more versatile placeholder than a person profile.  Also, if you want the full ST methodology, a systems theory approach requires a system to start with.  I suggest the slaveholder's neighborhood and town.

Comments

"the slaveholder's neighborhood and town."

But then how to deal with traveling speculators?  Or multiple documents across different locations as a potentially Enslaved Person is sold and re-sold?

Answer 3

I am wondering how BeyondKin would treat LNAB for some profiles I worked on recently. This was an instance where a slaveholder essentially acknowledged the second family he fathered with a female EP (his will freed them and promised them significant assets, and some sources say he moved with Virginia to Kentucky with this second family before he died). The children of this relationship ended up using his last name. I have been wondering if his last name should be treated as their LNAB, or if some other name would be appropriate.

Comments

If they took his last name, in this case it seems pretty clear that that should be the kids last name.

The BKP method is meant to piece together bits of disparate data.  A case like this is relatively straightforward, since they are his kids, and she effectively married him, imho.  Unless it is a rare case, like that of Sally Hemmings, in which she already had a last name of her own.

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Thanks! I was wondering if you might suggest an LNAB based on their plantation name.

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Good idea!  If we agreed to add an AKA name based on plantation name for the purpose of helping others track that person's ancestors, yes, it's not a bad idea at all, imho, but I'd think that her LNAB should be the name that she chose to acknowledge (or the name that was thrust upon her grandmother and mother, in the case of Sally Hemmings).  As long as some way of connecting her enslaved ancestors to the previous owners is retained so that earlier ancestors can be tracked, if that makes sense?

Also, for those of Latino descent, having two LNABs is a need that the Database could fix with a double surname, but I gather that that is a much longer term issue.

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I remember us discussing the possibility of plantation name as an LNAB, but what to do if the enslaved person moved from one plantation to another?

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The BKP approach appears to use plantation names as LNAB equivalents. I imagine that if two plantations could be identified, they would use the earliest known plantation. I hope ShiraDestinie can clarify.

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The plantation Document is the EPs last name, until enough data is found to create a real person profile.  Please see comment above in this thread:

"I have now started my first BeyondKin grouping on Ancestry.com. commented Jun 14 by E Weatherall G2G6 Mach 1"

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At first, plantation names are used as the LNAB for each document from that plantation (or institution, like G'town College in 1838...):  no real person profile is created yet until enough data is gathered across a set of documents. 

Please see comment/replies by Weatherall above for sample created using the BKPmethodology:

" I have now started my first BeyondKin grouping on Ancestry.com. commented Jun 14 by E Weatherall G2G6 Mach 1"

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Or if they didn’t own a plantation. I’ve found a couple of ancestors that had slaves. I’m sure once I get to working on the southern part of the line I will find more.

So far I’ve only come across a few but they’ve only talked of a couple and only by first names. Didn’t they normally take on their owners last names?

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Hi, Alice:

Thank you for this work!  Yes, the majority of EPs had no real last name, simply known by a nickname most of the time, and taking the surname of the current owner, and thus often changing last names, each time he or she was sold.  

Many urban EPs were hired out by their owners, and thus did not live on a plantation, or had owners with whom they worked in workshops, etc.  So there may not be a plantation, but hopefully there will be some sort of documentation aside from a Will, like tax docs,  a bill of sale or a  manumission document, etc.

Thank you again for embarking on this work, and please do check in frequently with Emma MacBeth!

Stay safe and well,

Shira

Shira

Answer 4

You may want to work with the newly re-launched African American Project to come up with a proposal on how to implement the Beyond Kin methodology on WikiTree:

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1056988/would-you-like-to-join-the-launched-african-american-project

Comments

I am in fact doing just that, thank you! :-)  I've been a member of both projects for some years, though I am still looking for a replacement as coordinator for the Slavery sub-Project.  Hopefully, connecting both projects will build momentum.  I have personal issues that mean I need to step down.  Please encourage anyone you know who may have interest in either project to contact Emma McBeth https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/user/McBeth-165

Best,

Shira

Answer 5

I just created an example profile for an enslaved person and was going to start a G2G thread, but it really belongs as part of this thread, so.....

There are currently 9 profiles with a LNAB of "Slave."  I suspect there are some number of other profiles of enslaved persons with a LNAB of "Unknown," and they may be difficult to track.  

My great-great grandfather recorded a manumission freeing enslaved persons in 1796 and I created a profile for one of them as Sal Enslaved.  When I found this thread I looked at the Beyond Kin link's suggestions for naming, and it didn't seem like a good alternative to use it intact because, first, I don't think the WikiTree computer would like parentheses in LNABs, and second, some profiles would have multiple identifying possibilities but others would have none.  In Sal's case, we know that James Day was in Montgomery County in 1796, but we don't really know where, despite Maryland giving all property colorful titles at that time.

Without the parentheses identifying the profile as that of an enslaved person, the Beyond Kin suggestions, by themselves, could result in the person being hidden.  Assume that "Joe" was enslaved on the Peachtree Plantation.  Profiling him as Joe Peachtree Plantation might trigger a "suggestion" that perhaps Peachtree was a Middle Name, and profiling him simply as Joe Peachtree would make it sound like most any other LNAB.  

I would propose "Enslaved" as a default LNAB for new profile creations when we can't think of another LNAB, because that clearly identifies the person;  there were no profiles with that LNAB until I created Sal's.  

What would seem to make the most sense to me, where one knows the name of the plantation, would be to have a category for that plantation.  If the recognizably same person moved between several plantations, all of their categories would apply.  I have previously created several categories for Maryland's named land tracts in order to group together people associated with it to see if they might be related,  It would make sense to me to work with the Categorization Project to create a naming system for the categories that would help group enslaved persons so that if there was any possibility of tracking the same person from document to document, that possibility might be realized. 

Looking to categories as a major asset in dealing with this would permit using real LNABs like "Hemmings" when they exist, as well as a default LNAB like "Enslaved" and it would be the categories that group them together meaningfully.  

I don't know if creating "Sal Enslaved" is a good idea -- I solicit your feedback on that, and we can make changes accordingly.  I am going to look for all the existing categories that might fit him.  There were a half dozen other persons named in the same manumission document, but there's no need to create profiles for them until we fully discuss Sal Enslaved, and all the things we can do for him to help his descendants find him.

Comments

Thank you, Jack:

"I would propose "Enslaved" as a default LNAB for new profile creations when we can't think of another LNAB, because that clearly identifies the person;"

&

" I have previously created several categories for Maryland's named land tracts in order to group together people associated with it to see if they might be related,  It would make sense to me to work with the Categorization Project to create a naming system for the categories that would help group enslaved persons so that if there was any possibility of tracking the same person from document to document, that possibility might be realized. "

  I think that both of your proposals are excellent solutions for the WikiTree situation, provided that we also add some way to include the BeyondKin.org Project name, logo or other marker, in order that other researchers may find and collaborate on those same documents/documented people, hopefully.

Thank you so much:  since I am withdrawing from all project leadership on WikiTree, please contact the African-American project and Slavery project coordinator Emma McBeth: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/McBeth-165

Many thanks again!

Shira

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You're going to be sorely missed, Shira!

Jack, I would love to chat more with you on how we can use categories to mirror something like what the Beyond Kin proposes, especially since you understand categorizing on a deep level. This is going to be a huge undertaking, but once successful, it will be groundbreaking and amazing!

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I think that an LNAB of "Enslaved" is a good option, since it allows for both the transfer of enslaved people from different plantations, and name changes imposed or acquired.. Certainly it would appear in Jamaica that there were plenty of absentee "owners" and the movement, sale/purchase and registration of enslaved people was undertaken by middlemen or "Attorneys" for the absent owners

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HI Roz. this is an old post from a couple of years ago. We have since devised a system of documenting slavery at WikiTree.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:US_Black_Heritage:_Heritage_Exchange_Portal

Answer 6

Yes, at least a couple of other G2G discussions have had recent activity, either directly mentioning Beyond Kin or at least dealing with the topic of Categorization of Enslaved Persons and Slaveholders (American Slaves* and Slave Owners are the current descriptions employed here on WikiTree, unfortunately).

I think it would be a great idea to get a working group together that should include the affected projects/category managers.

Here is a conversation that I have begun with the Beyond Kin Project folks on Facebook. We need buy in, all around, but in order for that to work, we need standardization around the Common Method, and a protocol for how the Slaveholders are connected to Enslaved persons.

Because WikiTree allows for non-biological children to be attached, perhaps we have an opportunity for a simpler solution, whereby we would (with permission) use the Current Last Name to identify the plantation (in a standard way, and then as we come across enslaved persons, create them as children and add sourcing to the "parent" profile as well as to the EP's profile.

RE: Category:American_Slaves

"Example profile" (not using the Beyond Kin Common Method): Isaac Holeman

Note that the example profile does not create profiles for the partially named persons, but sourcing and bequeathal are described.

Hopefully the stakeholders here at WikiTree can take the lead in getting us onto the Common Methodology (using Current Last Name or perhaps using a Free Space Profile/Page to identify an entity of the slaveholder function), and the "nonbiological" child function can be employed in some way?

One of the tasks to also be completed is to move all of the present categorization to the preferred terminology enslaved / enslaved person (instead of slave) and slaveholder, too (instead of slave owner). In this effort, hopefully we can first confirm and validate that Black Americans / African Americans with descendants in America are on board with the BK terminology and methodology.

This latter point is important because otherwise, we would not be building an environment for genealogical exploration that is sensitive to the needs of the very community that we are wanting to better document. Noting, for example, that the example profile shown on the current categorization page leads nowhere for the enumerated persons: they are merely stuck on the list of the slaveholder.

Looking forward to continued conversation and innovation, as well as the stakeholders on WikiTree becoming involved.

Fann

* See for example: Rudolph John Chauncey Fisher. Other categorizations at lower hierarchical levels exist, such as drilling down from Slavery, United States of America to Slavery, North Carolina to North Carolina Slaves to one of 24 subcategories for NC by county, most of which appear to be empty.

Comments

Thank you, Fann Fann:  Please contact Emma MacBeth, coordinator of both the African American and Slavery projects, to tye this in with the other project members.

Best, and Stay Safe,

Shira

Answer 7

I just created a mini family tree of people descended from two slaves who were left land by a distant relative of mine and have been scratching my head about how to find their parents' names etc. Look at Dickason-179 and Pack-2059.

Comments

Excellent!  Thank you Carl:  have you connected with Fann Fann and others working on this in concert with   Emma MacBeath?

Best,

Shira

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Not yet, but I will.