US Black Heritage Project Birth Locations

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]
Surname/tag: black_heritage

US Black Heritage Project

Having a birth location in the data field of WikiTree profiles, even if it's just a guess, is very important for avoiding the creation of duplicate profiles that later will need to be merged. It also helps people find profiles if they're searching for family members of their own or of other people they're working on.

If you don't know the birth location, please make an educated guess and mark the field as uncertain:

• If it's a slave profile and you just have documents like a slave owner will, use the location of that document and mark it as Uncertain.
• Census records from 1850 onwards list a state where people were born, so most post-1865 profiles should have at least a state for their birth location.
• If different sources give different birth locations, make your best guess about which one is correct and add a research note explaining the situation.
• If you're working on something like a cemetery where the gravestone is the only source you can find, you can add the state where the cemetery is and mark it as uncertain. You can add a research note saying that "A source for the birthplace hasn't been found, so the state of the cemetery they're buried in has been used as an estimated birthplace to help people find this profile in searches." At the very least, please add United States as the birth location and mark it as uncertain.
• Similarly, if a parent is named in a child's record and there is enough information to create the parent profile, use the child's birth state as the estimated location. If the child's birth location is not known, you could use, for example, the marriage state from a child's marriage record. Or again, at least the United States.

We would like US Black Heritage Project members to regularly check if they have missed a birth location on any of the profiles they have created. You can use this WikiTree+ search but replace the WikiTree ID Melick-229 with your own WikiTree ID in the search box on the left, then click the blue "Get profiles" button. This search will include profiles you have created but later orphaned.