Massive New Database Will Finally Allow Us to Identify Enslaved Peoples and Their Descendants in the Americas.
▻http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/massive-new-slave-trade-database-will-finally-allow-us-to-identify-afri
Throughout the history of the so-called “New World,” people of African descent have faced a yawning chasm where their ancestry should be. People bought and sold to labor on plantations lost not only their names but their connections to their language, tradition, and culture. Very few who descend from this painful legacy know exactly where their ancestors came from. The situation contributes to what Toni Morrison calls the “dehistoricizing allegory” of race, a condition of “foreclosure rather than disclosure.” To compound the loss, most descendants of slaves have been unable to trace their ancestry further back than 1870, the first year in which the Census listed African Americans by name.
But the recent work of several enterprising scholars is helping to disclose the histories of enslaved people in the Americas. For example, The Freedman’s Bureau Project has made 1.5 million documents available to the public, in a searchable database that combines traditional scholarship with digital crowdsourcing.
▻http://www.lowcountryafricana.com/the-1870-brick-wall
he 1870 Census was the first to list freed African Americans by name. The 1860 Census listed only the age and gender of enslaved people, and plantation records, wills, estate inventories and bills of sale often listed only the first names of slaves. To complicate matters, fewer than 20% of freed families in the Lowcountry adopted the name of the final slaveholder, so surname is most often not a good indicator of which slaveholding family’s records hold the keys to your family’s heritage.
Because of these challenges, many family historians find their research stalled at the 1870 Census. Here, we have compiled all the records in our document database which positively connect freedmen with surnames to former slaveholders.
As we find new records, we will add them to this page so please check back often. If you find an ancestor here, we would love to hear from you. You can drop us a note on our Contact Page!
Discover your roots and unlock your future.
▻http://www.discoverfreedmen.org
Enslaved: People of the Historic Slave Trade
▻http://research.msu.edu/enslaved-people-of-the-historic-slave-trade
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMS1r8WHyoc
