Finding Last Names for Those Who Were Enslaved in South Carolina

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: South Carolina, United States
Surnames/tags: Slavery Black Heritage Last Name

Finding the Last Names of those Enslaved or Previously Enslaved in South Carolina
by Michelle Detwiler

Looking for the last names of the enslaved is often a difficult job. If you don’t know who the descendants were, it can be near impossible to find a last name of an enslaved person, unless the slave owner has added those last names in his records. That almost never happens.

Recently I was working on profiling the memorials listed on Find-a-Grave in Georgetown County, South Carolina. After working on one cemetery, I realized there were cemeteries with the word Plantation in the cemetery name. I looked up one of those cemeteries, as it had been a plantation I was just starting to work on (researching the owners, finding records, etc).

After profiling the first few memorials I was suddenly surprised with a great number of sources for the next person I worked on. His last name listed on the memorial not only led me to Civil War documents and Freedmen’s Labor Bureau Contracts, but to the actual plantation he was enslaved on. He had been listed without a last name in the probate inventory for the plantation owner, among 589 other enslaved persons. I was able to profile his whole family who were listed in that probate inventory all because I found his last name in the cemetery records.

So, I continued on. Not every memorial in that Find-a-Grave plantation cemetery led me back to that very plantation, but many did, and now I had some last names for the enslaved and I knew who I was looking for on other sources. Cemeteries are certainly for more than just birth and death dates.

One other thing that has helped me when looking in South Carolina for last names are the death certificates, which begin in 1915. These death certificates often tell who a person’s parents were, and some included a last name for the mother. For the African-American community this is vital, a last name to research. The death certificate also tells where a person was born. However, when it comes to ages and birth dates the death certificate may not be the best resource, but something for noting the general time frame.

One other thing, in Georgetown County, South Carolina, on the 1870 census, everyone seems to have been listed with their actual birth county or birth district within that county. Another amazing win for researching!