February 2002 Genealogy Forum News

African Ancestored Research

Submitted by: African Ancestry Team

The African Ancestored Research Area in the Genealogy Forum is a gateway to records and resources for researching African Ancestry. The portal is AfriGeneas.com. Afrigeneas has grown from a text based Bulletin Board System (BBS) in 1990 to a developing research community. The developers were initially encouraged and supported in their efforts by George Ferguson, owner of the Golden Gate Genealogy Forum. These interconnecting sites might be said to be a model of collaborative effort to meet the needs of family researchers.

The AfriGeneas Slave Data Collection, an undertaking of 11+ years' duration, has long been a focal point in our efforts to help researchers find their last slave owner. Very often the ONLY clue to finding our slave family may be found in the records and papers of the slave owning family. Ascertaining the name of the last slave owner becomes paramount in learning about our families before the 1870 census, when all African-Americans were enumerated for the first time.

Descendants of slave owners have been, and continue to be, generous contributors of data about the slaves held by their families. Many such records are still in the hands of these families, or have been scattered in unexpected locations such as the libraries of universities where descendants went to school. We ask EVERYONE to share any slave data found during their research, so that others may use it to locate their slave family ties. All donors are credited for their contributions.

The Collection is primarily searched online by surname. A recent addition under construction is the ability to search by State. There is a "form" at the website that can be used to type and submit data. A suggested format for submission is also offered, but the data are vastly more important than the format. If preferred, the data can simply be submitted by email to slavedata@afrigeneas.com/ or a photocopy can be mailed to our hardcopy archive at: Anniston-Calhoun Public Library, Alabama Room - Slave Data Collection, PO Box 308, Anniston AL 36202. Please remember to include citations to the source document.

A separate section of the Slave Data Collection consists of the Slave Manifests for the Port of New Orleans. The transcription of these manifests and their posting online is an ongoing project of AfriGeneas, begun by Dee Parmer Woodtor, PhD. In her words, "…migration and settlement of the frontier…" really meant "…domestic slave trade..." for African-Americans.

Between 1808 and 1865, approximately one million slaves were transported by ship from East Coast ports as far north as Boston to as far away as New Orleans. From there, the slaves were distributed through trading houses and slave markets to various areas of the expanding country. In some cases, entire plantations moved to new lands purchased by their owners. In others, slaves were sold individually or in "lots" for resale further south.

The Slave Manifests comprise Record Group No. 36 of the U.S. Customs Service, and are housed at the National Archives. The slaves mentioned populated much of AL, MS, western GA, LA, AR and TX. Each manifest lists the slaves (by name, age, height, and complexion), their owners at time of departure, ship, ship master, and ports of departure and destination. The protests of Free Negroes who had been kidnapped and shipped south for sale, illegal African imports who could not speak English, deaths on board, and other interesting notations were dutifully included by the customs agents in New Orleans.

The interactive AfriGeneas Surname Database and Registry, with its more than 20,000, entries and its recent interactive capability is an outstanding showcase of future records availability development.

Census records are one of the core tools of the genealogical researcher. Our African-American Census database includes extractions of the "Colored Population" during various years and living in numerous places. All types of census records are represented, including federal, state, mortality schedules, slave schedules, and lists of FPOCs (free persons of color). Some result from links to other sites, but we rely to a great extent on the generosity of contributors. All donations are credited.

The search is done by State, followed by county. Because of our reliance on donations, some localities are better represented than others. YOU can make a difference! Again, there is a "form" for submissions, or they can be sent by email.

From the AfriGeneas main page, there lies access to the main Mail List for over 1,000 AfriGeneas members, and many frequent visitors. Posts can be searched through the Mail List Archives back to January 1997. An amazing amount of real data is available through the Mail List, in responses to queries in the form of abstracts and the like. Many times this data has pointed researchers to exactly the source they needed, or introduced lost and/or unknown relatives.

Many African ancestored researchers begin their family history pursuits with the reality that they are researching not only persons descending from Africans, but also persons of other ethnic origins. In the Americas, it is a reality that such research is going to take one into Europeans routes, but most commonly it is known that there will be a journey into Native American genealogy as well.

The African American Team has encompassed various aspects of what has come to be called Black Indian Genealogy. This involves sharing resources of the thousands of records of the Five Civilized Tribes. In addition the less documented path of Black Indian research often involves the more difficult to trace records of mixed people from the Southeastern states. These records are sometimes found among those that document Free People of Color.

Various members of the African American Team are familiar with the documents from the Carolinas as well as Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, and often these states contain many persons of mixed Black and Indian ancestry. The AA Team has tried to be certain to include information about resources pertaining to Free People of Color as well as researching enslaved persons of African Ancestry. The Team, enhanced by persons with different areas of specialization include those with knowledge of the Indian Territory Black Indians, to others on the team with thorough knowledge of resources from free people of Colonial Virginia and the Carolinas. The staff has grown to expand to meet the research needs of the visitors to the Forum, and continues to incorporate new areas, as new avenues for research arise.

Another resource available at AfriGeneas is our growing collection of "City Directories." For African Americans, City Directories have provided clues we may otherwise have not have found. The information given varies from city to city, but most include Name, Address, Race and Occupation. Some also include a spouse's name and occupation, or designate a woman as a widow, thus serving as a sort of death notice for her husband. Often African-Americans are denoted by an asterisk (*) beside their name, or a small letter "c" (for Colored). African-American businesses, schools, social clubs and the like were often included. In larger cities, City Directories were done on a yearly basis, but smaller towns may have been done sporadically or not at all.

These documents can be important for locating family members that may have been left out of the Federal census, and may show the migration patterns of families between the Federal census years. They have often been a life saver during the years 1881-1899 for finding family possibly enumerated on the burned 1890 census. We are fortunate to have several City Directory extractions in our growing collection at The AfriGeneas Library.

Montego Bay...white sandy beaches, azure blue ocean water and swaying palm trees...Come To Jamaica.....the beauty of it all is overwhelming. Jamaica became one of the crown jewels in England's overseas empire when it conquered the Spanish in 1655. In 1673 the total population in Jamaica's was 17,272, 7,700 White inhabitants and 9,504 Blacks (mostly enslaved) by 1713 the slave population had increased to 55,000 and Sugar was King. For those descendants of Africans who research the islands in the British West Indies, Edward Crawford has provided a wonderful beginning resource on where and how to look for these ancestors.

"From 1815 onwards and at the end of the Great War with France the British government came under increasing pressure from Abolitionist sentiment and agitation in the UK itself (Crawford)." Mr. Crawford provides examples of Jamaican Manumissions of 1825 in the Public Record Office in England and abstractions of Individuals of African descent named in Africans in Acts of the Jamaican Assembly 1760-1810. Similar in some ways to the Free Negro Registers that were required in Virginia beginning in 1793 they are a great source of information for those researching those areas.

Another important, though young, resource at AfriGeneas is its State-AfriGeneas area, which contains webpages that focus on each of the fifty States and several other world-areas. Some States are still "Under Construction"; some are still "Up for Adoption"; however, the pages that are completed show our focus on those States' particular history from an African-Ancestored perspective, and include extractions, transcriptions and helpful links specific to that State. Each also has an area directly linked to a Mail List for researchers. This allows a close cooperation for all who are searching in a particular area. Check out the webpages for MS, IL, AL, KY, IN and Bahamas. Others are "Coming Soon"; watch us grow.

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