African American Slavery and Bondage: Difference between revisions

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*''The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870,'' Hugh Thomas. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. {{FSC|740859|item|disp=FS catalog book 973F2th.}} {{WorldCat|36884041|item|disp=At various libraries (WorldCat)}}  
*''The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870,'' Hugh Thomas. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. {{FSC|740859|item|disp=FS catalog book 973F2th.}} {{WorldCat|36884041|item|disp=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. {{FSC|322175|item|disp= FamilySearch catalog book 973 H6fr}}.
*''Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery,'' Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman.  Boston: Little Brown, 1974. {{FSC|322175|item|disp= FamilySearch catalog book 973 H6fr}}. Also
{{WorldCat|741011|item|disp=At various libraries (WorldCat)}}
{{WorldCat|741011|item|disp=at various libraries (WorldCat)}}


*''Slavery in the South: A State-by-State History,'' Jewett, Clayton E., and John O. Allen.  Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004. [http://www.worldcat.org/title/slavery-in-the-south-a-state-by-state-history/oclc/57436276&referer=brief_results WorldCat]
*''Slavery in the South: A State-by-State History,'' Jewett, Clayton E., and John O. Allen.  Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004. [http://www.worldcat.org/title/slavery-in-the-south-a-state-by-state-history/oclc/57436276&referer=brief_results WorldCat]

Revision as of 17:04, 20 January 2025

African American Genealogy Wiki Topics
African American Image 5.jpg
Beginning Research
Original Records
Compiled Sources
Background Information
Finding Aids


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.

Online Resources[edit | edit source]

Introduction[edit | edit source]

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[edit | edit source]

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.[1]

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.[2][3]

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.[4]

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.[5]

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

Slave Trade


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[edit | edit source]

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 book 975.F23s. At various libraries (WorldCat)

Microfiche collection State Slavery Statutes. Microfiche collection 354 fiche. FS Library microfiche 6118902-6118916. At various libraries (WorldCat)

Plantation Records[edit | edit source]

How to Access the Records[edit | edit source]

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.[6] 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[7] 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[8] 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[edit | edit source]

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:[9]

  • 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.
  • 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 catalog 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.


Lists of Plantations[edit | edit source]

Registers of Enslaved Persons, Freedmen, and Manumission Papers[edit | edit source]

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[edit | edit source]

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. Austin, Texas: Pemberton Press, 1974 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[edit | edit source]

Selected Slave Manifests


Slave Trade[edit | edit source]

Websites

Publications

  • 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) .
  • 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. Also

at various libraries (WorldCat)

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

FamilySearch Library[edit | edit source]

Slavery and Bondage collections at the FamilySearch Library

Other Sources[edit | edit source]

References[edit | edit source]

  1. Wikipedia contributors, "Slavery in the United States," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States (accessed February 5, 2009). Citing The First Black Americans - US News and World Report.
  2. Wikipedia contributors, "Slavery in the United States," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States (accessed February 5, 2009). Citing Alan Gallay, "Forgotten Story of Indian Slavery", Arab News (www.aljazeera.info), August 3, 2003.
  3. Wikipedia contributors, "History of slavery," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery (accessed February 6, 2009).
  4. Wikipedia contributors. History of slavery [Internet]. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia; 2009 Feb 5, 08:12 UTC [cited 2009 Feb 6]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery.
  5. Wikipedia contributors, "Slavery in the United States," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States (accessed February 5, 2009).
  6. Jean L. Cooper, Genealogical Index to the Guides of the Microfilm Edition of Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution Through the Civil War ([Bloomington, Ind.]: 1st Books, 2003), vii. [FS Library Ref book 973 D22cj]
  7. LexisNexis, "Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution Through the Civil War" in UPA COLLECTIONS Publications at http://www.lexisnexis.com/documents/academic/upa_cis/2462_AnteBellSouthPlanSerK.pdf (accessed 27 March 2010).
  8. LexisNexis, "Slavery in Ante-Bellum Southern Industries" in UPA COLLECTIONS Publications at http://www.lexisnexis.com/documents/academic/upa_cis/1575_SlavAnteBellSouthIndSerCPt1.pdf (accessed 27 March 2010).
  9. Cooper, viii.