How to Find Out if My Family Owned Slaves

Atlanta, Georgia, slave sale house during Marriage General Sherman'southward occupation in September-Oct 1864. A Union soldier sits in front of the building. Photo by George Due north. Barnard. (Everett Collection)

Take y'all ever searched for ancestors who seemed to leave no newspaper trail? You know the ones: The nomads who elude the census. The relatives who didn't ain belongings. The women (darn those surname changes!). The repose folks who never made a ripple—permit alone a splash—beyond the page of a newspaper.

Now imagine searching for ancestors who were not only poor and landless, simply weren't fifty-fifty considered people past their government. They came in ships without rider lists. They would never become naturalized or vote. They weren't named in censuses. They appear in taxation records, but only as objects beingness taxed.

This is the documentary darkness of American slavery. To discover an ancestor's name in that darkness can exist a long and difficult task. You showtime by researching more recent kin, but all the while you lot're looking over their shoulders for show of slaveowners who held past generations in bondage. In one case y'all've crossed over into the slave era, you reverse your focus. Now you search for the slaveholders—and look over their shoulders for glimpses of your ancestors.

Of course, not every antecedent of African origin was enslaved. But about xc percent were. If you take at to the lowest degree one African American branch on your family tree, chances are yous'll eventually be doing slave inquiry. Let's get started.

Your unique history

In 1619, Dutch slave traders sold 20 African captives to the settlers of Jamestown, Va. For Americans with roots in Africa, this marked the beginning of your ancestors' arrival in America. Past 1808, when the importation of slaves was constitutionally prohibited, the U.s.a. was domicile to some i million slaves.

Your African ancestors were among the nation'due south original settlers. For nearly 240 years, slave labor helped build America, yet almost of these invisible souls take still to be identified or acknowledged. Now information technology's up to you, their descendants, to reconstruct the stories of their lives.

These stories of slavery went largely untold until Alex Haley's Roots. After the Civil War, descendants of both slaves and slaveholders suffered collective amnesia. Former slaves rarely spoke of their lives in bondage — most simply wanted to forget. Today, however, African Americans embrace this heritage. African American family reunions have become annual events, bringing together far-flung relatives, renewing interest in often forgotten ancestors and leading many to actively enquiry their family history. Even the millions of Americans with mixed-racial ancestry — estimates of the white population with some black ancestry range from 10 to 24 percentage — are digging into their heritage, exploring this lost part of their past.

Because of your African ancestors' unique history in this land, your search for them will pose special challenges. You can utilise standard genealogical techniques, as presented in every result of Family Tree Magazine, to trace back to 1870, the year of the first post-Civil War census. But when yous hit the pre-Civil State of war years, the records are no longer in the name of your ancestors but in the names of those who owned them. Even those African Americans freed prior to the Civil War were at some point slaves or the descendants of slaves. Identifying the slaveholding families and locating their records will be the keys to your quest.

These seven steps can help you lot get started:

i. Start with basic genealogy

First, do your homework. Read a practiced African American genealogy guidebook, such as Dee Parmer Woodtor's Finding A Place Called Domicile: A Guide to African-American Genealogy and Historical Identity (Random Firm). And find a guide that covers basic techniques of enquiry in American genealogy, such as First Steps in Genealogy by Desmond Walls Allen (Betterway Books) or United nations-puzzling Your Past: A Basic Guide to Genealogy 3rd edition past Emily Croom (Betterway Books). Woodtor'due south interactive guide for beginners on AfriGeneas provides tips on how and where to get started, along with suggested books and links.

Reach out to relatives

Once you lot've nerveless copies of family unit papers and photos like this i, get-go interviewing older family members first.

Showtime past chatting with elderly relatives, along with kin who are family "storykeepers" or who have quondam pictures or mementos. Just don't view these lives every bit mere stepping stones to the past. Enquire folks almost their own experiences, families, friendships and accomplishments. Ask what life was like during the Civil Rights and Jim Crow eras. Tape the conversation if you can, and so you tin can return to clues in information technology that may but later seem important.

Oral history plays an of import part in African American genealogy research. Learn how to apply the stories passed down to uncover records and detect your family history.

When the memories are flowing freely, inquire what your relative knows about slavery in the family's past. Were whatsoever stories passed down? What almost slaveholders connected to your family? Don't be discouraged if the person doesn't offer answers or doesn't desire to talk nigh information technology. Instead, inquire questions that will guide your research in the right direction.

Fill out a family tree chart

Try filling out every bit much as you can on a pedigree chart. This will help decide only how much or how little you know about your ancestors. Collect copies of all family unit papers, funeral programs, photographs and other memorabilia. Visit the family cemetery, if possible, to check ancestors' names and dates. Utilise the information you lot find in all these sources to fill in gaps on your chart.

Now determine which ancestral line to search. Consider starting with the ancestors you have the most information about or whose history is easiest to access. When you lot've done as much as y'all can on newspaper, notice and interview the family, starting time with older family members. Failing memories and decease claimed much of our history, especially from the slavery years — capture this living heritage while you lot can.

2. Find post-Ceremonious State of war records

Census records

As for virtually Americans, government records are the primary source of genealogical information for African Americans — especially federal census records. Brand sure to check the 1870 and 1880 agricultural censuses, likewise. And don't terminate at 1870: Perhaps your ancestors were freed earlier the Civil State of war.

Federal censuses can take y'all back in x-year intervals to the Civil War era. The 1940 census is only 75 years removed from slavery. So with each demography moving backward from there, you'll find increasing numbers of former slaves and their families. The clues will help y'all reconstruct families: relationships (1880 on); birthplaces (1860 on) and age (1850 on); the number of children a woman had borne (1900 and 1910); how many years a couple was married (1900 and 1910) and more than.

Be especially alert when you achieve the 1870 census, the kickoff taken after slavery ended and the beginning to enumerate former slaves by proper name. Every household member is named, but relationships aren't specified. You may be looking at "families" who banded together after emancipation left them stranded in hostile environments far from blood relatives. A couple or single parent may have taken in—not necessarily given nascence to—the children listed in the household.

Finally, expect for your relatives in the 1860 and 1850 censuses. If you detect them named, it means they were costless at the time. If they're absent, they were likely enslaved.

Race identifiers in the census can be helpful if, for instance, a relative is consistently identified equally "mulatto" (of mixed black and white ancestry) versus "colored." But call up that it's quite common to see a person'southward race appear dissimilar ways over time. Demography-takers often guessed based on skin tone, and people may take self-identified their race differently, especially after moving to a new identify.

Freedmen's Bureau records

The US Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, aka the Freedmen'southward Agency, was created after the Ceremonious War to deal with the needs of the emancipated slave population. In Freedmen's Bureau records, kept from 1865 to 1872, you may notice:

• hospital records or registers
• labor contracts betwixt freedmen and planters
• enrollments for local freedmen schools
• matrimony registers
• lists of food rations
• reports of outrages, disputes and court cases brought past freedmen against whites
• lists of freedmen and their families
• correspondence of local field agents describing the atmospheric condition in a particular expanse.

You may find other information as well. You can search almost Freedman'southward Agency Records at FamilySearch.org.

Learn how to use Mapping the Freedmen's Bureau website to inquiry African American ancestors later the Ceremonious War.

Freedman'due south Banking company records

Entirely carve up from the Freedmen's Bureau, the Freedman's Bank was organized after the war to assist African American wage-earners manage their money. Bank branches opened in 37 cities, mostly in the South. Signature registers of depositors survive for 29 bank branches. These requested a slap-up deal of genealogical information, such every bit names of parents, siblings and children; place of birth; age; marital condition; and residence. Search these registers for ancestors, other relatives, in-laws, and your known relatives' blackness neighbors in the 1870 census (you may later on discover they had the aforementioned slaveowner as your family unit). You'll discover this drove indexed and digitized on Beginnings.com, FamilySearch.org, and HeritageQuest (available through many public libraries).

The Freedmen's Bureau Online has information almost related records. Yous also can employ these records on microfilm at the National Archives and Records Administration and major research libraries. Larn more than at Archives.org.

Ceremonious war veterans' pensions

Civil State of war veterans' pension records may too hold clues. (To see if your ancestor was amidst the more than 250,000 slaves and free blacks who fought for the Spousal relationship, search the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System.) As role of the alimony process, applicants were required to prove their identity. In virtually instances, you will find their date and place of nascency — which may tell you the urban center, county or plantation where they were born — also equally wedlock records and names and ages of parents and children.

Relatives, neighbors and friends submitted affidavits that may incorporate information virtually their relationships to the applicant, perhaps naming a plantation, owner or family connection. Widows had to provide proof of marriage in the form of affidavits or marriage certificates, equally well as previous names they may take used. Applicants had to name where they enlisted and their service history, every bit well as residences and occupations post-obit the war. While some records are more helpful than others, you're sure to find some new or confirming facts here.

Vital records

Gather vital records for all family members (not but directly ancestors) as you work your fashion back in time. These will assistance you reconstruct the timelines of relatives' lives and their family relationships. They also may contain clues to the more than distant by. Don't settle for indexed versions of a record unless you tin't legally access the original. Indexes oftentimes contain mistakes and may not include everything in the actual record.

Search kickoff for government vital records kept at the city, canton and country levels. Note that recent records might be discipline to privacy restrictions. Onetime matrimony records, unless they were lost, are mostly available back to the date a county was formed. Many counties and cities began recording deaths and later, births in the decades following the Civil War. Country governments eventually took over birth and death registration, generally past the early 20th century.

Our Vital Records chart tells you when statewide registration began for each state. If you lot don't find your ancestor in vital records, inquire local experts whether a separate "colored" register was kept and where to find it. Similarly, be aware that older indexes may be "whites-only."

Other sources of information on births, marriages and deaths tin can fill in gaps where vital records are missing. They also may give you new or dissimilar data. For example, obituaries often include birth information, relatives' names, residences and more. Old newspapers may sketch out the lives of the formerly enslaved and mention relatives from whom they were separated.

Those who applied for Social Security benefits beginning in the mid 1930s filled out SS-five forms with their nascence dates and places, and parents' full names. Outset, search the Social Security Death Alphabetize (SSDI, gratuitous at FamilySearch.org) to locate a Social Security number, which confirms that an SS-5 should exist. Note that records for people born less than 100 years ago may exist subject to privacy restrictions. Acquire more than virtually requesting records here.

Land Records

If your ancestor was identified as a landowner in the 1870 census, look for the deed(s) to their belongings. A former slave who endemic country soon afterwards the end of slavery may accept gotten it from a slaveholder or someone connected with the slaveholder's family. Deeds are usually among county court records.

three. Aught in on 1870

Finding your ancestors in the 1870 census is the first step toward solving the mystery of their years in bondage. After the Civil War, near recently freed slaves remained at or most the place they'd lived before the state of war. Many who did relocate were reuniting with family they'd been separated from.

This search will probably have you dorsum to a county or parish somewhere in the South. From 1790 until 1900, 90 percentage of African Americans lived in the South, mostly in rural areas. For many ex-slaves, the migration northeast, north and w didn't begin until after 1900.

If your ancestors were in the North in 1870, information technology'southward possible they were freed prior to the war. Withal, y'all'll probably have to search for a slaveholder since most costless blacks were slaves at some betoken. Records documenting their freedom were usually recorded in county courthouses in probate or deed records.

If you tin't find your ancestors in the 1870 demography, it'southward likely they lived in the same state, county and community in 1880. Then make 1880 your focus instead.

The 1870 censuses will help you lay the foundation for your enquiry in other records:

• You lot will learn which ancestors probably were children in 1870 and perhaps the names of one or both of their parents.
• You might identify the bequeathed heads of household in 1870 and relatives who lived with them.
• You might observe other related families living in the ancestral neighborhood in 1870.
• You might place white families of the same surname as your family in censuses from 1870 frontwards.
• You might notice sure white families consistently enumerated about your family in censuses from 1870 frontward.

All of these discoveries are important, but the terminal two will be especially of import in arriving at the proper noun of your antecedent's slaveholder — either through the same-surname approach or by location.

Wait carefully at the community where your ancestors lived in 1870. Ask:

• Who were your ancestors' neighbors?
• How old were your ancestors and their neighbors?
• Where were they built-in?
• Are at that place others in the neighborhood with the aforementioned surname as your ancestors?
• Practice neighboring families have any surnames in common with your ancestors?
• Do the ages of your ancestor's children indicate they were a family before the Civil War?

Your answers will help determine if those living in the neighborhood are related or connected in other ways.

4. Determine the given and surname of the ancestor and his or her slaveholder

Unlike other ethnic groups arriving in America, enslaved Africans were systematically stripped of their cultural traditions and social community when brought to this country. As part of this procedure, recently arrived Africans were routinely renamed shortly after being removed from the slave ship. Until the terminate of the Ceremonious War, nigh slaves were identified by first proper name merely. Slaves on the same plantation with the same given names were distinguished by their size, age or color. Afterward the Civil State of war, newly freed slaves had to choose surnames for official identification. Their reasons for choosing a surname varied and many would change surnames a number of times earlier settling on a final selection.

Genealogical lineages depend on linking names into family relationships. Researchers use other tools, such equally dates and places, to ostend the names in each family in each generation. Successful genealogists, therefore, pay close attention to both given names and surnames within the family and the community, to variant spellings of names and to evaluation of names in documents.

Given names

Though your ancestors' surnames were crucial in recent records, the primal to identifying them in your pre-Civil State of war search will be their beginning names. Pay close attending to the given names of your ancestors' family as well every bit those of their neighbors. Compare the names of suspected ancestors you find in whatsoever slave documents with those living in the neighborhood in 1870. This may be the only way to plant that they are one and the same.

Slaveholders rarely identified slaves by their formal given names in records; instead they used nicknames. Then consider the possible variations of names that may accept been used to identify an ancestor. My ancestor James Humphreys, for example, would always be listed as "Jim," Jane Green as "Jenny," Jesse Humphreys as "Jess," Martill as "Till" and Elizabeth Weathersby as "Betsy." Such a thorough and complete review of the 1870 demography may reveal the identity of several new and previously unknown generations.

Until the end of the Ceremonious War, nearly slaves were identified publicly by only a given name. Slaves on the aforementioned plantation with the same given names were distinguished past age, size or color ("quondam Jim" or "young Jim," "big Moses" or "fiddling Moses"). Simply slaves followed their own naming practices by using nicknames, a practice still common today.

Because of the restrictions imposed by slavery and the lack of documentation on slave civilization, naming practices are difficult to verify. Scholars have speculated that naming patterns existed to the extent possible to identify kinship or maintain family unit ties. If your inquiry has taken y'all back several generations into slavery, watch for the repeated use of given names, especially if they are unique. As always, compare those names with names of mail service-Civil War family members.

Surnames

Family historians oft presume, mistakenly, that virtually freed slaves took the surname of their about contempo slaveholder. In reality, the surname might take belonged to a prior slaveholder — the first, the favorite or the longest — or the slaveholder of a parent or grandparent. Historian Eugene Genovese observed that old slaves had a "significant reason for going back in time to take the proper noun of the first chief they had ever had, or perhaps of the first whom they could think as having been a decent man: by so doing, they recaptured, as best they could, their ain history."

Of class, some families chose surnames with no apparent connection to erstwhile slaveholders. Some individuals or families chose:

• The surname of a locally prominent family or a famous American.
• A proper noun with an occupational link to the bearer — Mason or Carpenter.
• A name identifying a personal characteristic — Strong, Chocolate-brown, Freeman or African.
• Perhaps a given name of choice combined with a given name by which the person was known or the name of a parent — James Caesar or John Caleb.
• A surname with a possible geographic connection to the family.
• A name with a religious or symbolic significance.
• Every bit writer Joel Williamson put it, a name "for no credible reason other than the pleasure of the author," including such names as Prince, Helm or Governor.
• Different surnames. For example, Will Oats of Mercer Canton, Ky., told an interviewer that his brothers were Jim and Lige (Elijah) Coffey. Their masters had been Lewis Oats and his sis. Apparently, one blood brother chose the Oats proper noun, but the other ii did not.
• Different surnames at dissimilar times.

The ancestor's surname might be the clue that opens the door to your family'southward pre-Ceremonious War history. For some families, the reason behind the choice of a surname is already known, for others the reason may exist discovered during their research, and for the majority the reason may never be known. If you lot already know the history backside your family's choice of a surname, you lot can eliminate years of ho-hum and oft frustrating research.

In my research, only twice did I discover why my ancestors took their surname, and both took the proper name of a slaveholder. My dandy-nifty-granddad took the proper name of his slaveholder-male parent — my family has always known this. In fact, we have his slaveholder-father'due south portrait painted in the late 1840s or early on 1850s. My 3rd slap-up-grandmother likewise took the proper name of an owner, and information technology was her surname that led to the identification of her possessor. Though I've discovered the owners of a number of ancestors, I've still not been able to determine why they chose their surnames.

The slaveholder's surname

Knowing the name of the slaveholding family unit is essential to move your research to the adjacent level. Those who already know this tin skip ahead to step vi. If this data was lost with your ancestors, kickoff with the presumption that they took their former slaveholder'due south surname. First look at the neighborhood in which your ancestors lived in 1870, and then augment your search countywide, or fifty-fifty statewide if your ancestors' surname was unique, until you've collected a list of candidates. Be certain to include any possible spelling variations of the surname your ancestor was using. Consider going back as far every bit the 1850 census.

If you don't find the aforementioned or similar surnames in records from 1850 or subsequently, proceed to the adjacent step. Otherwise, you may narrow the pool of candidates by checking the slave censuses of 1850 and 1860 to determine if they owned slaves prior to the war. Cross-reference the ages of your ancestors with the ages of the slaves listed in the schedules. (Only historic period, gender and skin color of slaves were listed in these schedules.) This volition either strengthen any possible connectedness or eliminate unlikely candidates. When checking the 1860 and 1870 censuses, notation how much real estate each slaveholder candidate owned, and compare their places of nativity with your ancestors'.

v. Study your family's location

If the same-surname approach fails, studying where your ancestors lived in 1870 may hold the key to identifying a quondam slave-holder. Neither the newly freed slaves nor their former owners ventured far from their pre-Ceremonious State of war homes immediately subsequently the war. The blackness population remained heavily rural. In the economic wasteland of the South afterwards the war, former slaves and slaveholders alike faced desperate weather condition. Partly out of allegiance and partly from necessity, many quondam slaves and slaveholders continued their relationships. And then even in 1870 your ancestors were probably still living on land owned by their erstwhile masters.

Detect out who owned the land on which your ancestors lived in 1870 and you're likely to observe the identity of their slaveholder as well. (If your search of Freedmen'south Bureau records turns up labor contracts for your ancestors, consider yourself fortunate. The contractor and quondam slave owner are ordinarily the same. In this instance, proceed to step six and beginning searching that family's records.) The quickest way to find out who owned the property where your ancestors may have lived is searching pre-1870 county state taxation records. Country plat books besides may help identify local landowners. (Check the courthouse in the county y'all're researching, the Family History Library, or the state athenaeum to see if these records exist.)

Many census pages name the township, town, district or nearest post office at the top of the folio. Usually, residents enumerated with the aforementioned folio heading lived in the same general area. As you read the 1870 census, copy down the names of white families living in the neighborhood for five or more than pages on either side of your ancestors. Note the value of these families' real estate. If they owned no existent estate in 1870, it's possible they didn't own land before the state of war and are less likely to have had slaves.

Look for other clues to connect your family to a former slaveholder:

• If your adult ancestors were center-aged or elderly and were born in another state, expect for white neighbors who were born in that state.
• Look at the migration pattern of your family as shown in the birthplaces reported in the 1870 census for family unit members. If dissimilar birthplaces were reported for different individuals, make a timeline showing where the family was when each person was born. Does a neighboring white family unit mirror that migration design?
• If your ancestors lived in a Southern town or metropolis in 1870, they besides might have been there earlier the war. In this instance, begin with the same process described above, but realize that urban slaveholders generally had few slaves.

1860 and 1850 slave schedules and census records

Next, cross-reference all potential slaveholder candidates with the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules to aid narrow the listing. If you lot're unable to locate or access these records, closely examine all the white families living almost your ancestors in 1870. At commencement, consider only those white families with holding. Determine if they owned land before the war, were slave owners, and lived in the same place. Your answers will help decide which families will be the focus of your search.

Look also at the names of several neighboring slaveholders on either side of a possible slaveholder candidate in the slave schedule. Since simply the slaveholding population is listed in these schedules, you go a adequately detailed view of the slave community equally information technology might take existed before the Civil War. If your ancestors and their family members weren't with the suspected candidate(s), they might have been held past a neighboring slaveholder.

Follow these steps for using 1850 and 1860 slave schedules to trace your slave ancestors.

The 1850 and 1860 free schedules asked questions similar to the 1870 census, and none showed the relationship of household members to the caput of the household — wife, son, daughter. Every bit y'all await for slaveholder candidates, these censuses can provide such information as:

• the name, age, sex, colour, birthplace and occupation of each free person in each free household
• the value of existent estate a person owned — helpful considering near slaveholders endemic land
• the value of personal manor a person owned in 1860 — helpful because a high value of personal property could point slaves in the household

Expect at the 1860 free population census to make up one's mind what the customs looked like prior to the war. If your search reveals that much of the costless population in 1870 was in that location in 1860, the community might non accept changed significantly after the war.

Follow these steps for using 1850 and 1860 slave schedules to trace your slave ancestors.

6. Research "the other family"

Now that you lot've determined which slaveholding families warrant farther investigation, start researching records left by them. Focus on records that either proper name slaves or betoken slave ownership. The number of records available volition depend on whether the family was a large or minor slaveholder. The most thorough and consummate records were the business concern records of large slaveholding families. But these families fabricated up simply a pocket-sized part of the slave-owning population, and finding such private records — if they notwithstanding be — could be a challenge.

Probate records

When a slaveholder died, his or her slaves were inventoried and disposed of forth with the residual of the estate through the probate process. Owners often willed slaves to children or other family unit. Enslaved individuals are often identified in wills, estate inventories and other probate records by a first proper noun, gender, judge age and sometimes market value. Search probate files for members of the slaveholding family (including in-laws) before 1865 to trace ownership back in fourth dimension and perhaps link to other relatives.

Inventories

Also ofttimes part of estate papers, inventories itemized all the deceased's holding at the time of death. Slaves would be listed with sex activity and age.

Business relationship books

The executor of the estate kept account books, which may tape when the deceased's slaves were sold—and to whom. You might find them in probate file collections or on their own at historical societies, state athenaeum and in collections of family papers.

Also look for the will of the last known or suspected slaveholder even if it was long afterward the Civil War, considering former slaves occasionally appear as heirs.

Notation that non every white Southerner owned slaves, and whites weren't the only slave owners. Trivial has been written most African Americans who owned slaves, simply it appears the practice was common in Louisiana, South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia. Anthony Johnson, a free African and one-time indentured retainer, won a court case in 1654 that, ironically, alleged his retainer a slave for life. You can learn more well-nigh this phenomenon in Blackness Slaveowners: Gratis Black Slave Masters in Southward Carolina, 1790-1860 past Larry Koger (University of South Carolina Printing).

Mortgages

A slaveholder could use his slave as collateral for some other purchase. The mortgage recording the transaction should include the slaveholder's name, terms of the mortgage, description of the enslaved (first proper name, gender, age, marketplace value). Look for follow-upward paperwork showing the mortgage was paid, or for prove the slave was sold. In many places, that would appear in deed books and whatever courtroom handled foreclosures.

Estate records

Estate records are a matter of public tape and were required for big and pocket-size slaveholder alike. Other sources likely to name your ancestor are property records, such as deeds, mortgages and bill of sale records. Personal property tax records, state and federal census records as well equally the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules tin be used to assist rails slave buying over fourth dimension, merely are not probable to proper noun your ancestors.

Estate records of slaveholding families may provide the most comprehensive picture of your ancestors' lives. It could have as trivial every bit a few months or as long as 10 years to settle an manor. If you locate an estate document naming an ancestor, research the manor records to come across if other ancestors are named. The quantity and quality of data plant in these records too will depend on the person making the record. A meticulous record keeper may provide a wealth of data, such as entire family unit units, ages, births, deaths and skin colour, whereas others may provide only generic information.

These records may also provide insight into your ancestors' diet, the habiliment they wore, how often they got article of clothing, their health, and any special skills or trade they may have had. Advisedly study all related documents, non just the one on which your ancestor is named.

Manuscript collections

Typically, larger plantations kept meticulous records regarding expenses for clothing or medical care. For these slaveholders, manuscript collections of business relationship books, business concern and personal papers can prove valuable resources. Manuscript collections tin be in various locations: metropolis, canton or state historical or genealogical societies; state archives; and public or academy libraries. Most societies and libraries publish manuscript collection guides on their websites, so search Google on the slave owning family unit'southward name.

Deeds

These papers record the transfer of property on the footing of a sale, gift or trust. Slaves were sometimes transferred via deeds. Deeds are usually in county courthouses, but might have been transferred to state archives. Y'all'll also detect some on FHL microfilm—run a search on your ancestor'south county and wait for the deed records heading.

Because the lives of the slaveholder and slave families are so intertwined, you need to study the owner family'southward history and genealogy to fully explore your own. Slaves contributed not merely to a family'due south financial worth but also to their status in the community. In many instances, slaves remained in the same family for generations. As valuable "holding," they were transferred by inheritance, gift or deed to sons, daughters, sisters, brothers and grandchildren.

Once you lot find a slaveholder, tracking that slaveholder's genealogy dorsum may help lead to the identity of your ancestors' parents or fifty-fifty grandparents, who may have been in that family for generations. Fortunately, many of these families' histories and genealogies have already been published and tin can be found in genealogy libraries, athenaeum and on the internet.

7. Slave documents tell a story

Finding a document naming a slave ancestor or ancestors tin be a cause for celebration. Only your greatest reward may come from the secrets that these documents reveal about your ancestors' lives.

One time you lot've got a strong lead on a potential slaveholder, it'south fourth dimension to switch the focus of your research to that person and his or her family. Slaves are unlikely to take left records in their ain names; whatever mention of them will most likely announced amidst the records and stories of the slaveholders.

Several records at the county courthouse may mention a slaveholding family'southward enslaved "assets." These aren't consistently available on microfilm or online, nor are they always indexed. The records may take been kept in different means from place to place. So chances are you lot'll need to become dig for the post-obit types of records in person:

Bills of sale or deeds of gift

Slaves were substantial pieces of property. When a slaveholder transferred them to someone else, a transfer was usually recorded at the county courthouse. Bills of sale included the names of the heir-apparent and seller, their counties of residence, the engagement of auction and the purchase price. Yous'll as well normally find the first name, gender and gauge historic period of the slave. Sometimes, specially for deeds of gifts, the deed states relationship between buyer and seller.

Hiring out

Sometimes slaveholders hired out their slaves to work for others, often when a slaveholder needed the money, had no work for that person or couldn't fairly supervise the slave. The two contracting parties were the slaveholder and the person hiring the work; the slave often was described by first proper noun, gender and historic period. The contract also details the length of the work term, financial terms and often, the nature of the work to be done. Look for contracts like these in deed books or Freedmen's Agency records. If you don't see them, ask a local proficient where they're filed.

Manumissions

A slaveholder filed a manumission (emancipation) with the court when freeing a slave. Search for them in human action books. October. 4, 1841, Benjamin Prall filed manumission papers in Mercer County, Ky., "in consideration of the faithful service of my yellow woman Gabriella about xx vii years old do hereby emancipate and set free said adult female and her two children one past the name of James Walls nearly six years former and the other by the name of Harriett near two years old." The person beingness freed was identified by proper name, gender and age. You lot besides may find stipulations on that person'due south freedom and the motives of the slaveholder. Note that manumissions don't be for those freed as a natural result of the Ceremonious War.

Court orders

A manumission wasn't always the final document required for freedom: a court club also may have been necessary. A bondsman—often the slaveholder, former slaveholder, relative or friend—may have posted a bond certifying the freed person's good future behavior.

A research strategy lonely is no guarantee that your search will be successful. Merely with proficient research skills, patience, persistence, skillful instincts and lots of luck, you can get a long way toward reconstructing the lives of these invisible souls — your forgotten African American ancestors.

Information provided in this article was written past Franklin Carter Smith, Emily Anne Croom, Kenyatta D. Berry, Deborah A. Abbott and Sunny Jane Morton

Information in this article appeared in the February 2001 (Smith), December 2002 (Smith and Croom), January 2010 (Berry) and January/February 2015 (Abbott and Morton) issues of Family Tree Mag.

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Source: https://www.familytreemagazine.com/heritage/african-american/finding-slave-ancestors/

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