African-American Genealogy Resources

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Surnames/tags: black_heritage african_american slavery

US Black Heritage Project Home Page

Slavery, Educational Resources

Resources by State Directory

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Tips for Searching Enslaved Ancestors 2.1 Name Tracing 3 General African American Resources 3.1 Colonial Times Resources 4 Black Indian Genealogy 5 African American Cemeteries 6 Slavery Resources 6.1 Post Slavery 6.1.1 Large Slave Owners 6.1.2 Slave Narratives 6.1.3 Plantations 6.1.4 Slave Ship Manifests 6.1.5 Manumissions 7 Chronology of Events in US Black History 7.1 African Slave Trade 7.2 Revolutionary War 7.3 US Slave Trade after 1807 7.4 Civil War

Introduction

This Black Heritage resource page has links to both external resources found on the web, as well as, WikiTree project pages that document the history and the people concerned.

Tips for Searching Enslaved Ancestors

• Enslaved Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade Start a search across 1,110,078 records from the historical slave trade
• Video: Freedmen's Bureau and Freedman's Bank Records with Nicka Sewell-Smith and Crista Cowan
• Researching The Enslaved WikiTree page
• Navigating Slavery Topics and Locations in Wikitree
• Reclaiming Kin - Blog
• Researching African American Families that came out of Slavery, article by LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson, CG
• William Still Underground Railroad Data 900+ people recorded by Still now in a data set.
• Black Indian genealogy research The Five Civilized Tribes and slavery

Name Tracing

• Tracing Black Last Names
  • https://www.archives.gov/research/alic/reference/ethnic-heritage
• Beyond Kin Project

General African American Resources

• Centennial Encyclopedia of the African American A.M.E. Church
• Citing Slavery Project Confronting the role the legal profession has in slavery. Fully digitized cases with names of owners and slaves within court documents.
• The Frderick Douglass Papers
• African American Gateway
• University of Washington History: African American
• US Archives African American Research resources
• Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society Various City/County/State Historical/Genealogical Societies.
• (edited) Black Indian Genealogy Research
• Reparations4Slavery - History of Slavery and Institutional Racism state by state
• NARA African American Records
• Black Abolitionists Zinn Education Project. Brief biographies of 25 Black abolitionists]
• African American Genealogy from Family Tree Magazine
• Slavery and Emancipation in the Nation's Capital Using Federal Records to Explore the Lives of African American Ancestors
• The Journal of African American History
• List of 900 Free African Americans in the Revolution
• Records of the Southern Claims Commission Includes details about African Americans in the southern US including names, ages, residences, slave owners, manumissions, etc.
• African American Student Database from the University of Michigan
• Black Towns and Settlements: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/f33c40b9ae044f878db0fe7a4b912fb2
• Article: Black Towns lost to History: https://www.fastcompany.com/90737451/beyond-black-wall-street-these-experts-are-unearthing-historically-black-towns-lost-to-history?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits&cta=1&src=ph
• BlackPast.org
• African American Migration to the Great Plains Photo Gallery An interesting place to do research, in order to ID families in the photos.
• The Black Craftspeople Digital Archive
• Who's Who of the Colored Race: A General Biographical Dictionary of Men and Women of African Descent. (1915)

Colonial Times Resources

Everyday Black Living in Early America

Black Indian Genealogy

• Black Indian genealogy research by Walton-Raji, Angela Y

African American Cemeteries

• Burial Database Project of Enslaved Americans by the Periwinkle Initiative
• Google Books: The Burrying Ground for Negroes pg.123
• Resting Place of Colored US Soldiers and Sailors
• Smithsonian Magazine -133 Years of African American Funeral Programs

Slavery Resources

• Interactive Atlas of Historical Couty Boundaries
• Slavery, United Sates of America, Resources
• Research Department of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. “Free Negro Owners of Slaves in the United States in 1830.” The Journal of Negro History 9, no. 1 (1924): 41–85. (open access).
• Article about digitized Bibb County deed books from the 1800s
• 1860 Slaves Age 100 and Up

Post Slavery

• Post slavery "last seen" ads

Large Slave Owners

• Presidents who held slaves
• Thomas Jefferson Papers
• Thomas Jefferson's Monticello slaves
• Georgetown University - 1838 Jesuit Slaves
• Sixteen Largest American Slaveholders from 1860 Slave Census Schedules
• Largest Slave Holders of the Deep South Family Search
• Large Slaveholders of 1860 - Tom Blake has identified the largest slaveholders on the 1860 US census and matched those surnames to African American households in the 1870 census
• African American Gateway - Tazewell, VA Slaveholders in 1801
• Free Negro Owners of Slaves in the United States in 1830 Together with Absetee Ownership Also at JSTOR: Free Negro Owners of Slaves in the United States in 1830
• NNDB: List of Slaveholders
• Index to Confederate Slave Payrolls WikiTree Project page
• Slave Name Roll Project Resources
• Citing Slavery - Database of cases involving slaves
• Reparations4Slavery Slavery and institutional racism state by state.
• Duke University Libraries - Archives and Manuscripts: American Slavery Documents
• The Digital Library on American Slavery (DLAS) Duke University Libraries - Archives and Manuscripts: American Slavery Documents A collection of manuscript items relating to American slavery assembled over a number of decades by the staff of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University. Collection contains items documenting the sales, escapes, and emancipations of enslaved people from colonial times through the Civil War, and to a lesser extent, materials relating to slavery in the United States dating from the post-emancipation period.
• Lineages Johni Cerny, researcher
• African-American Newspapers at Chronicling America
• The Northeast Slavery Records Index (NESRI) The Digital Library on American Slavery (DLAS) compiles independent collections focused upon race and slavery in the American South, made searchable through a single, simple interface. DLAS houses tens of thousands of records relating to all 15 slave states and Washington, D.C. as well as a number of northern states. DLAS contains detailed personal information about over 100 thousand individuals, including enslaved people, enslavers, free people of color, and more.
• Slave Rolls Project
• Database of Lost Friends
• The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White The story of two Hairston families. One black that rose from slavery to success in mainstream America, the other white as it fell from wealth and power after the end of the Civil War. This book can be checked out for a day or a week.

Slave Narratives

• US Black Heritage, Slave Narratives WikiTree Project page
• Slave Narratives at Project Gutenberg - complete

Plantations

• US Black Heritage Index of Plantations WikiTree Project page
• Thomas Jefferson Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society
• A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons (1865) Free Google book
• Freedom on the Move is a database of "runaway ads" describing people wanted for running away as well as people apprehended. The database is searchable and includes copies of the actual ad.

Slave Ship Manifests

• Index of Slave Ship Manifests in USA
• Using Ship Manifests for Slave Research
• Coastwise Slave Manifests
• NARA Slave Manifests
• New Orleans, Louisiana, Slave Manifests, 1807-1860
• National Archives: Slave Manifests
• Compass Ships' Lists Inward Slave Manifests for the Port of New Orleans Roll 3, January-March 1822
• Slave Manifest for Beaufort (SC) search by name, owner of ship
• Enslaved Ancestors quarantined on Charlestown's Sullivan's Island, NC
• Slave Voyages - interactive

Manumissions

• Robert Carter III Deed of manumission
• Manumitted: The People Enslaved by Quakers (Haverford)
• Manumissions at Friends Historical Library (Swarthmore)
• Indenture and Manumission Records at Family Search
• Rutgers University Manumission records

Chronology of Events in US Black History

African Slave Trade

• Sons & Daughters of the United States Middle Passage
• African slave Trade 1788
• Library of Congress: Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860
• Wikipedia: Sierra Leonean American - (This link has a section on Notables)
• Slave Voyages - interactive
• Slave Voyages Database
• Slave Ships and the Atlantic Crossing, Middle Passage
• Enslaved Ancestors quarantined on Charlestown's Sullivan's Island, NC
• The ‘Clotilda,’ the Last Known Slave Ship to Arrive in the U.S., Is Found

Revolutionary War

• Black Courage, 1775-1783: documentation of Black participation in the American Revolution Internet archive book
• Forgotten Patriots, African American and American Indian Patriots in the Revolutionary War National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. A Guide to Service, Sources, Studies (lists patriots by state).
• List of 900 Free African Americans in the Revolution
• Black Loyalists American enslaved ancestors who fought with the Loyalists
• Nova Scotian Settlers American enslaved ancestors who gained freedom in Nova Scotia

US Slave Trade after 1807

• National Archives Coastwise Slave Manifests
• Index of Slave Ship Manifests in USA WikiTree project
• Clotilda: Last Known US Slave Ship WikiTree project
• Inspection Roll of Negroes Book No. 1, Miscellaneous Papers of the Continental Congress, 1774 - 1789, National Archives Catalog
• Inspection Roll of Negroes Book No. 2, Series: Miscellaneous Papers of the Continental Congress, 1774 - 1789 Record Group 360: Records of the Continental and Confederation Congresses and the Constitutional Convention, 1765 - 1821, National Archive Catalog,

Civil War

• US Colored Troops in the Civil War
• Confederate Slave Payrolls Shed Light on Lives of 19th-Century African American Families
• Confederate Impressment During the Civil War
• 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers
  • 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry WikiTree project page
• African American Soldiers and Sailors who were awarded the Medal of Honor: Civil War
• Gladstone Collection of African American Civil War Soldiers 350 images showing African Americans and related military and social history. The Civil War era is the primary time period covered, with scattered examples through 1945.
• Civil War Trust , teacher resources
• National Park Services - Civil War
• Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops Late 1st S. C. Volunteers: Electronic Edition. Taylor, Susie King, b. 1848 full text eBook
• Antebellum & Civil War Era Original Documents
  • https://www.jstor.org/site/vanderbilt/antebellum-civil-war/
• Free and Slave States Map - 1857