African American Slavery and Bondage

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United States

African American Genealogy

Slavery and Bondage

Slave market, built in 1762, in Newport, Rhode Island, now home to the Museum of Newport History.

Guide to African American slavery, plantation, and other related records available for researchers.

African American Online Genealogy Records

Online Resources

• 1751-1865 North Carolina Runaway Slave Notices, 1750-1865 at Digital Library on American Slavery - index & images; newspaper advertisements
• 1780-1939: United States, Indenture and Manumission Records, 1780-1939 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index & images
• Pre-1880 U.S., Newspapers.com™ Auctions of Enslaved People and Bounties on Freedom Seekers Index, Pre-1880 at Ancestry; index ($)
• 1936-1938 Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938
• Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
• Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade - includes records of those enslaved, including court records, and links to relevant databases and projects documenting individuals
• Slaves and Slavery Resources: Briscoe Center for American History. University of Texas at Austin
• National Archives. African American Heritage American Slavery, Civil Records
• National Archives. Records that Pertain to American Slavery and the International Slave Trade
• Digital Library on American Slavery - University of North Carolina - Greensboro
• Slavery Era Insurance Registry
• Federal Records that Help Identify Formerly Enslaved Persons and Slaveholders
• Enslaved Population Research Directory at The Beyond Kin Project - index; information on researcher
• Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture and Law at HeinOnline - available through public libraries; lists all colony, state and federal statutes related to slavery in the U.S. including cases regarding slavery
• The Lantern Project (Legal Records Documenting Enslaved Persons) at Mississippi State University Libraries — index & images
• Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery at informationwanted.org - index & images; newspaper ads looking for family members

Introduction

Example plantation record listing slave birth and death dates.

Finding an African American ancestor who was enslaved almost always means finding the records of the slaveholder.

Study the life and records of the slaveholder and his family. Your ancestor’s life was inseparably connected with the slaveholder. Your ancestor may be listed in records of the slaveholder's property:

• Tax records. These list enslaved persons and their monetary value.
• Land and property records. Search for information about deeds, sales, mortgages, or rental transactions of enslaved persons.
• Probate, estate, and chancery court records These show the distribution of enslaved persons at the death of the slaveholder.
• Plantation records. Account logbooks give the names of enslaved persons, family relationships, and their assigned tasks. Some records give birth and death dates of the enslaved. They also record when an enslaved person was bought, from whom, and for how much. Most plantation records would be in the hands of the slaveholder's descendants, or at county or state archives or libraries.
• Slave Narratives.

History of Slavery in America

Nearly 75 percent of people who arrived in America from Europe and Africa before 1776 were immigrants in bondage. Those from Africa almost always arrived enslaved. Those from Europe were often convicts, indentured servant apprentices, or became indentured servants to pay for the cost of their ocean crossing. In colonial times indentured servitude as an apprentice was considered the normal way to learn a trade (part of growing up), or a normal option for paying a large debt.

In 1619 a Dutch ship blown off course came looking for fresh water near Jamestown, Virginia. At Jamestown the Dutch sold 20 of the enslaved Africans they had captured from a Spanish ship originally bound for Mexico. These were the earliest known African immigrants to arrive in what is now the United States. It was the custom of that time to free enslaved servants after seven years.

Caribbean and Brazilian plantations (95 percent of the trans-Atlantic slave trade) usually grew sugar and few enslaved persons survived there for seven years. In America (five percent of the slave trade), enslaved persons lived longer and had children. In the thirteen British-American colonies, a milder climate and better working conditions growing tobacco, cotton, hemp, and indigo allowed enslaved persons to live long enough to be freed. But the institution of lifetime chattel slavery applied to people of African descent was slowly accepted and developed when slaveholders were reluctant to give up such valuable labor to compete with their former slaveholders. This form of slavery was formally legalized first in British-America in 1654.

All 13 British-American colonies participated in the slave trade before 1780. In the 1750s, a slavery abolitionist movement began and grew stronger. Vermont was the first to abolish slavery in 1777 and by 1804 all individual states north of the Mason-Dixon line had gradually ended slavery. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was a federal law that prohibited slavery north of the Ohio River. Enslaved labor works best when the assigned task is repetitive or simple, such as large-scale agriculture. Slavery in increasingly industrialized America was becoming too expensive until the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. An enslaved, healthy, young, adult male was worth about two years wages, so most slaveholders considered freeing those held in bondage as an economic hardship. The Constitution of the United States permitted the outlawing of the importation of enslaved persons starting in 1808, but the internal slave trade continued until the end of the Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment prohibited chattel slavery in 1865.

The American Slave Code in Theory and Practice : its Distinctive Features Shown by its Statutes, Judicial Decisions, and Illustrative facts William Goodell, New York : American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1853 Online at FamilySearch Digital Library

' Related Sources

• Ira Berlin. The Origins of Slavery. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
• Steven Mintz. Historical Context: Facts about the Slave Trade and Slavery The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
• World of a Slave: Encyclopedia of the Material Life of Slaves in the United States, by Marth B. Katz-Hyman and Kim S. Rice, eds. Two volumes, Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood Press, 2011. FS Catalog book 973 H6km

Slave Trade

• Sons & Daughters of the United States Middle Passage
• Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
• 'Encyclopedia of the Middle Passage, by Toyin Falola and Amanda Warnock, eds. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2007. FS Catalog book 973 H6ft
• Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, by David Eltis and David Richardson. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2010. FS Catalog book 306.362 EL83a. At various libraries (WorldCat).
• The Atlantic Slave Trade: a census, by Phillip D. Curtin. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969 FS Catalog book 382.44 C94t
• Freedom Narratives. Testimonies of West Africans from the Era of Slavery

American slavery was particularly hard on African American families. Slaveholders were frequently forced by economics to sell members of an enslaved person's family. A few slaveholders freed some or all of their enslaved persons in their wills, but more often, ownership of the enslaved was transferred to the slaveholder's wife or children. In some cases, rather than free an enslaved person as instructed in the slaveholder's will, the enslaved person was sold to help pay debts. A few slaveholders allowed their enslaved to earn money and purchase their family members or their own freedom. Marriages of enslaved persons were usually not recorded by civil authorities until after the Civil War in Freedmen's Bureau records. However, occasionally these marriages were recorded in the plantation records or the slaveholder's family Bible records.

Receipt for $500.00 payment for a slave.

State Slavery Statutes

These records are the acts and laws of the following slave states: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia

State Slavery Statutes: Guide to Microfiche Collection, by Paul Finkelman. FS Catalog Collection At various libraries (WorldCat)

Microfiche collection State Slavery Statutes. Microfiche collection 354 fiche. FS Catalog Collection At various libraries (WorldCat)

Plantation Records

How to Access the Records

A few plantation records are listed in a set of user-guide books starting with the title Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution through the Civil War (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1966). The records described in these user-guide booklets are a microfilm collection of manuscripts held in several major research libraries throughout the South. Parts of the papers from some plantations were once scattered by their donation to many libraries, and this collection now helps gather some of them in a single set. It offers access to selected material from Maryland to Texas in one source. Viewing the user guides online requires Adobe® Acrobat® Reader. Also, a more recent series about slavery in Southern industries has been started.

Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations Collection or Repository	User Guide	FHL First Film
Series A, Selections from the South Carolina Library. University of South Carolina Part 1: The Papers of James Henry Hammond, 1795-1865 Part 2: Miscellaneous Collections	pdf1 pdf2	FS Catalog 1534196 FS Catalog 1534211
Series B, Selections from the South Carolina Historical Society	pdf	FS Catalog 1534237
Series C, Selections from the Library of Congress Part 1: Virginia Part 2: Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina	pdf1 pdf2	FS Catalog 1534247 FS Catalog 1534255
Series D, Selections from the Maryland Historical Society	pdf	FS Catalog 1534260
Series E, Selections from the University of Virginia Library Part 1: Virginia Plantations Part 3: Virginia Plantations Part 4: Cooke Family Papers Part 5: Ambler Family Papers Part 6: Virginia Plantations	pdf1 pdf2 pdf3 pdf4 pdf5 pdf6	FS Catalog 1534274 FS Catalog 1534313 FS Catalog 1548744 FS Catalog 2230021 FS Catalog 2230087 FS Catalog 2330105
Series F, Selections from the Duke University Library Part 1: The Deep South Part 2: South Carolina and Georgia Part 3: North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia Part 4: North Carolina and Virginia Plantations Part 5: William Patterson Smith Collections	pdf1 pdf2 pdf3 pdf4 pdf5	FS Catalog 1549774 FS Catalog 1549797 FS Catalog 1549813 FS Catalog 2230145 FS Catalog 2230170
Series G, Selections from the Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin Part 1: Texas and Louisiana Collections Part 2: William Massie Collection Part 3: Bank of the State of Mississippi Records, 1804-1846 Part 4: Winchester Family Papers, 1783-1906 Part 5: Other Plantation Collections	pdf1 pdf2 pdf3 pdf4 pdf5	FS Catalog 1549858 FS Catalog 1549902 FS Catalog 2230190 FS Catalog 2330208 FS Catalog 2230235
Series H, Selections from the Howard-Tilton Library, Tulane University, and the Louisiana State Museum Archives	pdf	FS Catalog 1672269
Series I, Selections from Louisiana State University Part 1: Louisiana Sugar Plantations Part 2: Louisiana and Miscellaneous Southern Cotton Plantations Part 3: The Natchez Area Part 4: Barrow, Bisland, Bowman and Other Collections Part 5: Butler Family Collections Part 6: David Weeks and Family Collections	pdf1 pdf2 pdf3 pdf4 pdf5 pdf6	FS Catalog 1672254 FS Catalog 1672317 FS Catalog 1672299 FS Catalog 2330278 FS Catalog 2230316 FS Catalog 2230343
Series J, Selections from the Southern Historical Collections, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Part 1: The Cameron Family Papers Part 2: The Pettigrew Family Papers Part 3: South Carolina Part 4: Georgia and Florida Part 5: Louisiana Part 6: Mississippi and Arkansas Part 7: Alabama Part 8: Tennessee and Kentucky Part 9: Virginia Part 10: Hubard Family Papers, 1741-1865 Part 11: Hairston and Wilson Families Part 12: Tidewater and Coastal Plains North Carolina Part 13: Piedmont North Carolina Part 14: Western North Carolina	pdf1 pdf2 pdf3 pdf4 pdf5 pdf6 pdf7 pdf8 pdf9 pdf10 pdf11 pdf12 pdf13 pdf14	FS Catalog 1672791 FS Catalog 1672860 FS Catalog 1730987 FS Catalog 1730772 FS Catalog 1731443 FS Catalog 1760119 FS Catalog 1760148 FS Catalog 1760168 FS Catalog 1760188 FS Catalog 1843384 FS Catalog 1841689FS Catalog 1843410 FS Catalog 1843460 FS Catalog 1843500
Series K, Selections from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library, The Shirley Plantation Collection, 1650-1888	pdf	FS Catalog 1844005
Series L, Selections from the Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary Part 1: Carter Papers, 1667-1882 Part 2: Jerdone Family Papers, 1736-1918 Part 3: Skipwith Family Papers, 1760-1977 Part 4: Austin-Twyman Papers, 1765-1865 and Charles Brown Papers, 1792-1888	[pdf1] [pdf2] [pdf3] [pdf4]	FS Catalog 1844318 FS Catalog 1844336 FS Catalog 1844348 FS Catalog 1844362
Series M, Selections from the Virginia Historical Society Part 1: Tayloe Family, 1650-1970 Part 2: Northern Neck of Virginia; also Maryland Part 3: Other Tidewater Virginia Part 4: Central Piedmont Virginia Part 5: Southside Virginia Part 6: Northern Virginia and Valley	pdf1 pdf2 pdf3 pdf4 pdf5 pdf6	FS Catalog 1985945 FS Catalog 1986002 FS Catalog 1986019 FS Catalog 2230363 FS Catalog 2330422 FS Catalog 2230472
Series N, Selections from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History	pdf	FS Catalog 2230486

Slavery in Ante-Bellum Southern Industries Collection or Repository	User Guide	FHL First Film
Series A, Selection from Duke University Library	pdf	FS Catalog 1841653
Series B, Selection from Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill	pdf	FS Catalog 1844031
Series C, Selections from the Virginia Historical Society Part 1: Mining and Smelting Industries Part 2: Railroad and Canal Construction Industries and Other Trades and Industries	pdf1 pdf2	[film] [film]
Series D, Selections from the University of Virginia Library Part 1: Mining and Smelting Industries	pdf1	[film]
Series E, Selections from the McCormick-International Harvester Collection	[pdf]	[film]

Indexes

Genealogical Index to the Guides of the Microfilm Edition of Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution Through the Civil War, by Jean L. Cooper, Bloomington, Ind.: 1stBooks, 2003. FS Catalog book 973 D22cj. Also available online at Internet Archive. This book identifies each collection with material about a given family name (usually slaveholder, sometimes enslaved person) or plantation name, and locate microfilm copies of the papers with that family name or plantation name. The items indexed include deeds, wills, estate papers, genealogies, personal and business correspondence, account books, and lists of enslaved persons.

These are indexed in six separate lists:

• Location (alphabetical by city or county)
• Location (alphabetical by state)
• Plantation name
• Plantation name (alphabetical by state)
• Surname
• Surname (alphabetical by state)

To use the above indexes, you need to know either the location (the enslaved person's hometown), the name of his plantation, or the slaveholder's name. This information is sometimes found in Freedman's Bank or Freedmen's Bureau records. Only about 15 percent of formerly enslaved persons used the family name of their former slaveholder.

For a competing index of the same ante-bellum plantation records see FamilySearch Library Bibliography of African American Sources As of 1994, by Marie Taylor, (Salt Lake City: U.S./Canada Reference, FamilySearch Library, 2000 FS catalog Book 973 F23tm; and Fiche 6002568. This book is Online at FamilySearch Digital Library. It is alphabetical under the county or state where the plantation was located, the name of the plantation, or the name of the plantation's owner. It also cites many other sources beyond the ante-bellum plantation records.

For plantation records not found in the above set, search state and local historical societies, libraries, archives, museums, and:

• National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections: Compiled by the Library of Congress Under a Grant from the Council on Library Resources, Inc., from Reports Provided by American Repositories, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., 1959. FS Catalog Book 016.091 N21.

• National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC), at various libraries (WorldCat). Library of Congress, by J.W. Edwards (Publisher varies: 1959-1961; 1962, The Shoe String Press; 1981 and 1991. Available online at the Library of Congress.

• Index to personal names in the National Union Catalog of Manuscript collections 1959-1984, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, 2 vols. (Alexandria: Chadwyck-Healey, 1988). FS Library Book 016.091 1959-1984 index. Also at various libraries (WorldCat). Look for the slaveholder's name in this index in order to find planation records in the catalog above.

• Sankofagen Wiki is a growing collection of free genealogical and historical data about American plantations, farms, factories, or manors that used enslaved African labor including names of enslaved persons. Arranged by state, county, and plantation.

• The Large Slaveholders of the Deep South, (Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia), by Joseph Karl Menn, Ann Arbor, Michigan, UMI Dissertation Services, 1964, FS Catalog book 973 H6m Vol. 1-3. Also at various libraries (WorldCat).

Lists of Plantations

• Plantations in the American South
• Alabama
• Georgia
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• North Carolina
• South Carolina
• Virginia
• West Virginia

Registers of Enslaved Persons, Freedmen, and Manumission Papers

By the time of start of the Civil War in 1861, about ten percent of African Americans were free. Most free African Americans carried their own papers, but these could be stolen. In order to distinguish between enslaved persons, runaways, and free African Americans, many counties or states in the upper South and border states kept one or more sets of registers or papers. Some had registers of enslaved persons. Some kept registers of Blacks, Freedmen, Free Men of Color, or "free Negroes." Some kept copies of manumission papers of formerly enslaved individuals. To find these kinds of registers or papers look in county courthouse records. They are most likely found in the court papers, among the land and property deeds, or occasionally in probate and tax records. Sometimes these kinds of records are found at state libraries, archives, or historical societies.

Slave Trade Registers

The Constitution allowed the outlawing of the importation of enslaved persons to the United States after 1808. Between then and the Civil War, the internal slave trade became an important business in the Southern United States. Most states regulated the slave trade. A few kept records of slave traders and their businesses. Look for such business registers at state libraries, archives, historical societies, or county courthouses.

• Adventures of an African Slaver: being a true account of the life of Captain Theodore Canot, Trader of Gold, Ivory and Slaves on the Coast of Guinea, his own story as told in the year 1854 to Brantz Mayer. (Includes a log book), by Theophile Conneau. FS Catalog book 921.73 C762a. At various libraries (WorldCat).
• Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, 4 Vols. by Elizabeth Donnan, ed. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1935. (Includes a list of Slave Ships). At various libraries.

Slave Manifests

• Ship Manifests of Enslaved Persons at the National Archives; covers some records listed below
• Slave Manifests - National Archives Catalog Coverage Table

• Coastwise Slave Manifests, 1820-1860, Port of Mobile Alabama. NAID 2554808
• Coastwise Slave Manifests, 1801-1860, Post of Savannah, Georgia. NAID 1151775
• Slave Manifests, 6.27.1817, Port of Baltimore, Maryland. NAID 140107046
• Slave Manifests for the Port of New York, 6.1822-8.1852. NAID 7821181
• Slave Manifests for the Port of New Orleans, 1817-1861. NAID 5573655
• Slave Manifests for the Port of Philadelphia, 8.1800-4.1860. NAID 875814
• Coastwise Slave Manifests, 1820-1858, Port of Charleston, South Carolina. NAID 2767346
• Coastwise Slave Manifests,1826-1830, Port of Beaufort, South Carolina, NAID 2767350

Selected Slave Manifests

• Slave Manifest from the Brig Alo. NAID 2641467
• Slave Manifest for Brig Virginia of Baltimore. NAID 7456575
• Slave Manifest for Brig Orleans. NAID 7456569
• Slave Manifest for the Schooner William of Troy. NAID 7364549
• Slave Manifest for the Brig Splendid of Baltimore. NAID 17408487
• Slave Manifest of the Katherine Jackson of Georgetown. NAID 46756382
• Slave Manifest for the Brig Comet Gardiner. NAID 17408488
• Slave Manifest of the S.S. Texas from La Salle to New Orleans Arrived March 5, 1860. NAID 6210358
• Outward Manifest, Steamship Savannah, April 16, 1852. NAID 43953606
• Outward Manifest, Steamship Florida, July 3, 1852. NAID 44128298

Slave Trade

Websites

• Enslaved|Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade

Publications

• Slave Trading in the Old South, by Frederick Bancroft, New York, New York: Frederick Ungar Pub. c 1969, FS catalog book 975 H6b. At various libraries (WorldCat)

• Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life, by Steven Deyle, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. At various libraries (WorldCat)

• A Troublesome Commerce: The Transformation of the Interstate Slave Trade, by Robert H. Gundmestad, Baton Rough: Louisiana State University Press, 2003. At various libraries (WorldCat)

• The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History, by Rawley, James A ., with Stephen D. Behrendt, Lincoln: university of Nebraska Press, 2005. 1981 ed at various libraries (WorldCat) .

• Speculator and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South, Michael Tadman, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989. FS Catalog 975 H6t. At various libraries (WorldCat) .

• The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870, Hugh Thomas, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. FS catalog book 973F2th. At various libraries (WorldCat)

• Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Boston: Little Brown, 1974. FamilySearch catalog book 973 H6fr.

At various libraries (WorldCat)

• Jewett, Clayton E., and John O. Allen. Slavery in the South: A State-by-State History. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004. WorldCat
• King, James F. Descriptive Data on Negro Slaves in Spanish Importation Records and Bills of Sale. Journal of Negro History. Volume 28 pages 204-230

FamilySearch Library

Slavery and Bondage collections at the FamilySearch Library

• Southern States Slavery and Bondage Collections
• North Carolina Slavery and Bondage Collection

Other Sources

• David E. Paterson. A Perspective on Indexing Slaves' Names. The American Archivist. 64 (Spring/Summer, 2001):132- 142.
• James W. Petty. Black Slavery Emancipation Research in the Northern States. National Genealogical Society Quarterly 100 (December 2012):293-304. FS Library 983 B2ng
• Timothy Nathan Pinnick. Slave Era Insurance Registry. NGS Magazine 33 #4 (October-December 2007):27-31.
• Beginning United States Civil War Research gives steps for finding information about a Civil War soldier. It covers the major records that should be used. Additional records are described in ‘Louisiana in the Civil War’ and ‘United States Civil War, 1861 to 1865’ (see below).
• Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, Division of Insurance. Slavery Era Insurance Policies Registry. A database about insurance policies issued for slaveholders, arranged slaveholder's name may be searched by state's abbreviation (VA for Virginia)
• National Park Service, The Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System, is searchable by soldier's name and state. It contains basic facts about soldiers on both sides of the Civil War, a list of regiments, descriptions of significant battles, sources of the information, and suggestions for where to find additional information.
• Louisiana in the Civil War describes many Confederate and Union sources, specifically for Louisiana, and how to find them. These include compiled service records, pension records, rosters, cemetery records, internet databases, published books, etc.
• United States Civil War, 1861 to 1865 describes and explains United States and Confederate States records, rather than state records, and how to find them. These include veterans’ censuses, compiled service records, pension records, rosters, cemetery records, internet databases, published books, etc.
• Peter Hinks and John McKivigan, eds., R. Owen Williams, assistant Ed., Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2007. FS Library 326.803 H593e vols. 1-2
• J. Blaine Hudson. Encyclopedia of the Underground Railroad. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2006 FS Library 973 H26hj
• Sons & Daughters of the United States Middle Passage
• Paul Finkelman. The Revolutionary Summer of 1862. How Congress Abolished Slavery and Created a Modern American. Prologue 49 (Winter 2017-18)
• Slave Name Roll Project

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