What Genealogists Should Know About the Laws of Slavery Amy Tanner Thiriot, RootsTech Connect 2021
A Very Brief Timeline of Slavery in the United States 1490s Use of enslaved labor in the Caribbean by Europeans.
1520s Enslaved people in St. Augustine, Florida.
1619 “20 and odd” African captives in Jamestown Colony.
1662 Virginia adopts Partus sequitur ventrem, making enslavement follow the mother’s line.
1705 Virginia adopted a slave code with property rights for enslavers, a legalized slave trade, a disarmed Black population, and runaway laws; over time other states enacted similar codes.
1777 Vermont abolished slavery.
1789 The US constitution allowed slavery.
1807 The US abolished the importation of slaves. The trade did not end entirely, but it did slow. The law resulted in an increased domestic slave trade, which separated families.
1865 The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolished hereditary racialized slavery.
Guides to the Laws of Slavery Hurd, John C. The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States. 1858, 1862.
Volume 1: https://archive.org/details/lawfreedombondag01hurdrich
Volume 2: https://archive.org/details/lawfreedombondag02hurdrich
Morris, Thomas D. Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860. 1996.
Thomas Mason’s 1837 estate inventory lists Anthony, Peter, and Barbara and two children. FamilySearch and Hancock County Courthouse, Sparta, Georgia. What Genealogists Should Know About the Laws of Slavery—RootsTech Connect 2021 2
Genealogical Organizations Follow these organizations on social media for education and networking. Social media can introduce you to additional need-to-follow accounts and resources, including local chapters of AAHGS.
Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS): https://www.aahgs.org/
AfriGeneas: https://www.afrigeneas.com/
Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage: https://sdusmp.org/
Records of Enslaved People
Census and Census Slave Schedules When researching African American families use census records back to 1870 as usual. Remember to check state censuses. Pre-1870 census records will be most immediately useful for free Black families, or where a researcher with enslaved ancestors has already determined the names of their ancestors’ enslavers. Use them to narrow down possible enslavers together with naming patterns, family movements, Freedmen’s Bureau records, state and county records, and DNA research.
The census reported information about the numbers of the enslaved in a household in the population schedules from 1790 through 1840. The 1850 and 1860 censuses included slave schedules. The schedules showed the number of the enslaved in each household with additional data, but no names. (An occasional slave schedule will list names.) Enumerators listed the enslaved in a household by age, not grouped by family. The slave schedule should differentiate between enslavers and renters of the enslaved, but in some cases may not. The census numbers may not agree with tax records. Chart census information with tax and other records to determine household movements, when the enslaved entered or left a household, and approximate dates for births and deaths. If you can find census agriculture and manufacturing schedules, they provide clues about work and diet.
Church Records Find church records through historical societies and archives, genealogical databases, religious archives, or occasionally by contacting Biddy Mason and Hannah Smiley Embers and their churches directly. Look at the records of both families in the 1852 California State Census. Black and White churches. FamilySearch and the California State Archives. What Genealogists Should Know About the Laws of Slavery—RootsTech Connect 2021 3
Cohabitation or Freedman’s Marriage Records States legalized the marriages of enslaved people after emancipation. States or counties hold remaining records. Some are available online. Some provide family names, but others provide only given names. Check FamilySearch and local and state archives.
DNA Research Sometimes the realities of their lives and the laws of slavery meant the names of the enslaved appear in no written records. In these cases, the DNA they passed to any surviving descendants may be the only genealogical records left. Learn to do DNA Cohabitation record for Turner Williams and Esther Aycock. FamilySearch and State Archives of North research through recent books and online Carolina. guides, or take courses through genealogical organizations.
Estates (Wills, Probate, Inventories, Settlement, Guardianships) When enslavers died, they either left wills or died intestate (without wills). When they died with wills, courts appointed executors. When they died intestate, courts appointed administrators. Executors or administrators oversaw the accounting and settlement of estates.
The enslaved were normally treated as personal property (chattel) and may appear in wills or lists of assets by name. Enslaved families were often forcibly divided during estate sales or settlements. You may need to research the entire extended family of an enslaver to determine how an enslaved person entered or left a household through inheritance.
Freedmen’s Bureau The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau, 1865–1872) helped the newly freed with medical care, food, labor contracts, education, and repatriation of families. Many records are now indexed through a collaboration of FamilySearch, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS), and the California African American Museum.
Newspapers Some possibilities in newspapers include obituaries, biographical information, fugitive slave notices, and Last Seen notices. See below for links to databases. Look particularly for information in the Black press. What Genealogists Should Know About the Laws of Slavery—RootsTech Connect 2021 4
Manumission Records Manumission was the freeing of the enslaved. Remember that enslaved people were wealth, security, labor capacity, and inheritances for enslavers’ legal children, so manumission was rare.
The procedures for manumission depended on time and place. See Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law (Chapter 18) for more about how manumission worked. See Hurd, The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States (Vol. 2) for details on how specific states handled manumission, especially as laws changed over time. In Tennessee, for example, manumission was through a county courthouse, while in Mississippi George Drummond searched for his mother, brother, and it was through an act of the state sister. Southwestern Christian Advocate (New Orleans, LA), May 2, 1884, from Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery. legislature.
Check state legislative journals for mentions of the enslaved. See below for links to a guide to legislative journals and extracted legal records at the Race & Slavery Petitions Project from UNC-Greensboro.
Also check for newspaper notices of self-liberation (running away). See below for links to the NC Runaway Slave Advertisements and Freedom on the Move databases.
Plantation Records Some slave households may have preserved plantation records. Check family collections and state, regional, and university archives.
Property Records Slave law usually considered the enslaved as personal property or chattel, so check property records for a county or municipality. If created and still in existence, records may be filmed and available on genealogical databases, or may be in courthouses or archives.
State, Regional, and University Archives Become familiar with the resources available through repositories in the states where your research subjects lived. Remember state archives, regional archives, and university special collections. The institutions may have research guides (print or video), guides to the court structure of a state, detailed catalog entries, and librarians or archivists willing to help guide your research. Some genealogically important collections may be available through online databases including FamilySearch. In addition, the journals published by archives and historical societies may have important information for your research.
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Guides to African American Genealogy African American genealogical research has changed dramatically during the past decade. Here are some recently-published works. Although a regional study, Garrett-Nelson’s book is an important guide to directed research. See also general guides to genealogical research and research standards, plus recent works on DNA research.
Garrett-Nelson, LaBrenda. A Guide to Researching African American Ancestors in Laurens County, South Carolina. 2016.
Smith, Robyn N. The Best of Reclaiming Kin: Helpful Tips on Researching Your Roots. 2016. https://www.reclaimingkin.com/product/reclaiming-kin-book/
Williams, Heather Andrea. Help Me to Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery. 2016.
Online Resources for African American Genealogy African American Digital Bookshelf: https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/African_American_Digital_Bookshelf
AfriGeneas: https://www.afrigeneas.com/
American Ancestry: https://www.americanancestors.org/education/learning- resources/read/african-american-research
Ancestry: https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/Tips-for-finding-African-American-ancestry- 1460088565989-2219
Blackprogen LIVE: https://www.facebook.com/BlackProGenLIVE/
FamilySearch: https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/African_American_Genealogy
Legacy Family Tree Webinars: https://familytreewebinars.com/
Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/rr/genealogy/bib_guid/journey/index.html
National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans
Resources on the Irish Slave Myth: https://www.cyndislist.com/slavery/myth-irish/
State Library of North Carolina: https://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/ghl/genealogy/finding-slave- records
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_genealogy
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Online Databases of Slavery and Emancipation Follow genealogy organizations on social media and join organizations for additional tips and the release of new databases.
African American Historical Newspapers Online (Cornell University): https://guides.library.cornell.edu/aanewspapers
Black Press Research Collective: http://blackpressresearchcollective.org/resources/scholarship- archives/
Digital Black History: https://digitalblackhistory.com/
Digital Library on American Slavery: https://library.uncg.edu/slavery/
• Race and Slavery Petitions Project • NC Runaway Slave Advertisements
Enslaved: Peoples of the Historic Slave Trade: https://enslaved.org/
Freedmen’s Bank Records: https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1417695
Freedom on the Move: Rediscovering the Stories of Self-Liberating People: https://freedomonthemove.org/
Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery: https://informationwanted.org/
Legislative Journals by State: https://guides.loc.gov/state-legislative-journals/by-state
Slave Voyages: https://www.slavevoyages.org/
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law: https://home.heinonline.org/content/slavery/
General Histories of Slavery Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. 1998.
Franklin, John Hope and Evelyn Brooks Higgenbotham. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans. 2010.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513– 2008. 2013.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. and PBS. The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. Six part television series.
McDowell, Janelle. Forced American Heroes: Educational Coloring and Activity Book. 2 vols. https://forcedamericanheroes.com/ What Genealogists Should Know About the Laws of Slavery—RootsTech Connect 2021 7
Directed Studies of Slavery This is a brief list with works that may be of particular interest to genealogists. The field has an increasing number of important publications about slavery on the international, national, and local levels. In addition, historical journals may contain articles of help to genealogists.
Ball, Edward. “Retracing Slavery’s Trail of Tears.” Smithsonian, November 2015, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/slavery-trail-of-tears-180956968/
Berry, Daina Ramey. The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation. 2017.
Downs, Jim. Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction. 2015.
Dunbar, Erica Armstrong. Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge. 2017.
Foner, Eric. Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. 2013.
Foner, Eric. Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad. 2016.
Gordon-Reed, Annette. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. 2009.
Hunter, Tera. Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century. 2017.
Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E. They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South. 2020.
McDaniel, W. Caleb. Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America. 2019.
Rodriguez, Junius P., ed. Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion. 2 vols. 2007.
Thomas, William G. A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation’s Founding to the Civil War. 2020.
Wallace-Sanders, Kimberly. Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory. 2009.
Walton-Raji, Angela Y. Black Indian Genealogy Research: African-American Ancestors Among the Five Civilized Tribes. 2019.
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. 2011.
Williamson, Samuel H. and Louis P. Cain. “Measuring Slavery in 2016 Dollars.” MeasuringWorth. https://www.measuringworth.com/slavery.php What Genealogists Should Know About the Laws of Slavery—RootsTech Connect 2021 8
Biddy Mason and Hannah Smiley Embers The Long Road to Freedom: Biddy Mason’s Remarkable Journey: https://biddymasoncollaborative.com/
Demaratus, DeEtta. The Force of a Feather: The Search for a Lost Story of The court case that freed Biddy Mason and Hannah Smiley Slavery and Freedom. 2002. Embers in California in 1856. Miriam Matthews Photograph Collection, Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Smith, Stacey L. Freedom’s Frontier: Research Library, UCLA. California and the Struggle over Unfree Labor, Emancipation, and Reconstruction. 2013.
Slave Narratives Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1938. https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936- to-1938/about-this-collection/
Brown, William W. The Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave. 1847.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. 1845.
Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. 1789.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. 1861.
Northup, Solomon. Twelve Years a Slave. 1853.
Presenter Amy Tanner Thiriot lives in Pennsylvania. She is the author of Slavery in Zion: A Documentary and Genealogical History of Black Lives and Black Servitude in Utah Territory, 1847–1862 (forthcoming). She is a graduate student and an adjunct instructor in the Family History Research Program at BYU-Idaho.