African American Court Records
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Online Resources
- 1501-1875 Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade - Database at SlaveVoyages - Index.
- 1775-1867 Race and Slavery Petitions at Digital Library on American Slavery - index; court records regarding enslaved peoples; covers 15 slaveholding states
- Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade - includes records of those enslaved, including court records, and links to relevant databases and projects documenting individuals
- 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
Court Records
Court records in county courthouses or federal district courthouses can contain genealogy. Such records include court docket books, court minute books, and court case files in the court clerk's office. Federal court records more than thirty years old are moved to the National Archives which serve that court's state.
Enslaved persons and slaveholders were often in court suing over mistreatment, neglect, petitions for freedom, "fugitive slave" returns, and the like.
State Government Records Petitions can be a source of genealogical information. Some African Americans petitioned their state, asking for special help. For example, a law was passed in the Republic of Texas in 1840, requiring all free Blacks to leave by 1842. Some Blacks petitioned the Republic and were allowed to stay.
The Digital Library on American Slavery provides information about the enslaved, slaveholders, and Free People of Color. This website provides access to information gathered and analyzed over an eighteen-year period from petitions to southern legislatures and county courts filed between 1775 and 1867 in fifteen slaveholding states in the United States and the District of Columbia. This is a free resource provided from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro library.
The Library of Congress has a collection called Slavery and the Judiciary, 1740 to 1860.
The book State Slavery Statutes: Guide to the Microfiche Collection: FS Catalog book 975 F23s, by Paul Finkelman, includes an index by subjects, names and geographic locations. State slavery statutes for the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
The FamilySearch Library has the 354 microfiche collection of State Slavery Statutes, typescript original records created by the General Assembles of the states. The records are the acts of laws. Published by University Publications of America.
State Slavery Statutes
| State | FS Library Fiche # | Number of Fiche |
| Alabama, ca. 1818-1865 | 6118902 | 22 fiche |
| Arkansas, ca. 1818-1864 | 6118903 | 8 fiche |
| Delaware, ca. 1790-1865 | 6118904 | 13 fiche |
| Florida, ca. 1822-1865 | 6118905 | 16 fiche |
| Georgia, ca. 1789-1865 | 6118906 | 31 fiche |
| Kentucky, ca. 1792-1856 | 6118907 | 38 fiche |
| Louisiana, ca. 1804-1865 | 6118908 | 34 fiche |
| Maryland, ca. 1789-1865 | 6118909 | 35 fiche |
| Mississippi, ca. 1799-1865 | 6118910 | 31 fiche |
| Missouri, ca. 1813-1865 | 6118911 | 17 fiche |
| North Carolina, ca. 1789-1865 | 6118912 | 19 fiche |
| South Carolina, ca. 1789-1865 | 6118913 | 31 fiche |
| Tennessee, ca. 1795-1865 | 6118914 | 16 fiche |
| Texas, ca. 1836-1864 | 6118915 | 10 fiche |
| Virginia, ca. 1789-1865 | 6118916 | 33 fiche |
Civil Court Records from Other Parishes, 1700s-1900, will include successions, marriages, and conveyance (deed) records. The latter include sales of enslaved persons as well as sales of land. Enslaved persons sometimes sued their slaveholders in county court for mistreatment.
Judicial Cases
- Judicial cases concerning American slavery and the Negro, by Helen Tunnicliff Catterall, ed., five volumes. Reprint of the 1926 edition published by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. New York, New York, Negro Universities Press, 1968. FS Catalog book 973 F2aca v. 1-5 and digital versions.
Registers of Enslaved Persons, Registers of 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 the enslaved. Some kept registers of Freedmen, Free Men of Color, or "free negroes." Some kept copies of manumission papers of people freed from slavery. To find these kinds of registers or papers look in county courthouse records. They are most likely found in the court papers, or among the land and property deeds, or occasionally in probate records, or even with taxation 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 business. Look for such business registers at state libraries, archives, historical societies, or county courthouses.
Some registers, and other related data may be found on the following website about the slave trade throughout Europe and the Western Hemisphere.
- 1501-1875 Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade - Database at SlaveVoyages - Index.