SLAVE SOLDIERS FIGHTING FOR THE CONFEDERACY IN THE CIVIL WAR

Imagine being a slave and being told you will go to war, the Civil War, for the Confederacy, by the person who owns you! If a researcher finds that their ancestors who was enslaved was in the war, they may wonder "did he see action?"

The answer, generally but emphatically, is NO.  Confederate law prohibited it.  Yet, there were reports that this was so. And, there was always the possibility that a person who was forced to follow the troops as a cook or another useful supportive role could use that opportunity to escape or go north and join the Union Army! There is also another consideration. What if the person was a Free Person of Color and then joined up?

So, some of the things a researcher wants to do is to verify which company/troop the person fought in. Check the census or other records to see if that person reports being disabled or is not working for money after the war. Also see where they are living after that war. 

AMERICAN BATTLEFIELD TRUST : BLACK CONFEDERATES - TRUTH Excellent article!

Excerpt: Many Southern slaves took advantage of the fog of war to escape towards freedom. Before the Emancipation Proclamation was officially adopted, these escapes usually meant congregating around the Union armies that were operating in Southern territory. Vast columns of escaped slaves followed almost every major Union army at one point or another. These people, sometimes called “contrabands,” as in “confiscated enemy property,” frequently served as scouts and spies for the Union soldiers. 

...There were no black Confederate combat units in service during the war and no documentation whatsoever exists for any black man being paid or pensioned as a Confederate soldier, although some did receive pensions for their work as laborers.

... To be specific, in the “Official Records of the War of the Rebellion,” a collection of military records from both sides which spans more than 50 volumes and more than 50,000 pages, there are a total of seven Union eyewitness reports of black Confederates.

***

BUT THERE WAS AN EXCEPTION FOR A LITTLE WHILE

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE : ARMING THE ENSLAVED

Excerpt: Near 21st and Main Street in Richmond, Virginia, the first legally authorized African American Confederate soldiers were assembled and trained in the final weeks of the Civil War. Legislation passed by the Confederate congress on March 13, 1865, allowed for enslaved African Americans to be mustered and equipped on an experimental basis as combat soldiers. Before that date (less than a month before the end of hostilities in Virginia), Confederate law specified that only white men were permitted to serve as soldiers....

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FREEDMEN'S MARRIAGE BUREAU RECORDS 1846-1867 : USING THE ANCESTRY TM GENEALOGY DATABASE : LET THIS FUEL YOUR HISTORICAL RESEARCH!

I've posted about the Freedman * Bank Records before, but did you know that the Freedman Bureau also kept a record of former slaves (and some "free colored") who married soon after they were free from enslavement? 

In the past I've also posted on some methodology for African-American research, stating first of all it is American research and one ought to proceed with going back as neatly as possible, using census records, both federal and state, if possible. If a researcher can find their people on the census after liberation, they have some names. Other than that, there may be some oral history in the family but one must be careful to accept stories without some proofing. Our African-American cautionary tale is that upon liberation, a person could choose to change their surname and some did more than once, wanting to feel comfortable with that surname, and sometimes various family members chose various names. That said, I wonder how often that happened.

I explored this database for a few hours recently and want to give you some information that may be helpful.

So for the purposes of this post I'm using the Ancestry TM genealogy database. To find the database called Freedman Bureau Marriage Records you want to go into NEW COLLECTIONS (WHICH ACTUALLY ALLOWS YOU TO SEARCH THE ENTIRE CATALOG, not just recently added collections. You will see to the top left the words CARD CATALOG.) Put the word Freedman in the keyword search. You will see that you can search the  U.S.,Freedman's Bureau Records, 1865-1878

Then to the right bottom it says U.S., Freedmen's Bureau Marriage Records 1845-1867 

Remember that the NATIONAL ARCHIVES of THE UNITED STATES is usually the original or primary source for databases.

While the other records held in the overall records can be interesting, because if you may be able to find out who a plantation owner was, I like to focus on marriages because you have twice the chance of recognizing someone as an ancestor - a bride or a groom.  This may give you the name of a female ancestor by her married and maiden name.

My first impression was that I was able to easily pull up records without knowing any particular name simply by putting in the state. I also tried common names such as Smith, Watson, or Jefferson.

The database includes many states including, according to the database:
Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. NOTE THAT WEST VIRGINIA DID NOT YET EXIST so Virginia included what is now West Virginia and South Western Pennsylvania below the Monongahela River. However, I think you will find that this does not mean ALL THE INFORMATION EVER COLLECTED IN EACH STATE but that in some way that state is represented in the collection.

We can learn from exploring the database, even if we do not have an ancestor who was enslaved or are unsure of who was.

For instance, there may be questions such as if a person lived with another (without marriage) and for how long, how they were separated (dead, forced, separated by war, sold away), and the skin color of parents, partners, and others (mulatto, black, dark, white, yellow, milk.) Unlike the census in which a census taker might make the decision to list a person's color as they see it or because of community notions, in this case the person themselves is probably reporting parents who are not in attendance. In some cases the percentage of African- Black a person was given.  The persons who are marrying may be asked how many children they had with others and you might find a comment that they 'unitedly had children.' Once in a while the name of a former partner may come up.

THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND : The records were kept where the marriage was performed.

Just as many people who are part of the LBGT community rushed to be married as soon as it was legal to, many formally enslaved people who had been partnered without marriage rushed to be married.  It is not unusual to find that a particular Minister of the Gospel married twelve couples in one day. Perhaps your research can include the name of the Minister which might lead to the name of a church, church records, even church graveyard records.

Even when the couple appear on a register, rather than an individual slip of paper or form (not standardized from one state to the next), their ages are usually listed. These are adults who were generally born twenty or more years earlier. I found one record that said both persons were "free people of color" and I wondered if that meant "last week' or 'all along.'

As well, some of these forms or handwritten documents ask where the person is from. There may be the name of a place other than where the marriage took place. But you may just find a fantastic clue that the man served in the military, and most likely that means in the CIVIL WAR on the Confederate side!  If you see a line of abbreviations such as Pot. Co. C. 60 *** where it could say the name of a town or county or plantation, that means you were just given the company/troop information. You can then find what battles they might have served in...

In my next post, I'm going to write about the Black soldiers who fought for the Confederacy.

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* (I'm aware that the bank records seem to have the Freedman spelling while the other records are in plural, Freedmen.)

AMERICAN ANCESTORS GENEALOGY DATABASE : NEW! NORTH AMERICAN - RECORDS OF ENSLAVED PEOPLE FROM PLANTATIONS and ESTATES 1765-1890

You may find that your local library has AMERICAN ANCESTORS GENEALOGY DATABASE.  To begin using this new database: According to my library, this database  includes birth, death, marriage, and census records of those who were enslaved as well as family members.

Go to 10 MILLION NAMES. 

This is a database in progress: CEDAR GROVE PLANTATION, a very large plantation, is the first plantation to be included and IT IS ARRANGED BY PLANTATION or ESTATE.

CEDAR GROVE PLANTATION is currently privately owned historical site in Huntersville, Mecklenburg, county, North Carolina and was built in the early 1830's by James G. Torrance.

There are a good number of posts and links of interest to those who have slavery in their family history here at ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY.  I look forward to using this database and would like to hear from those of you who use it!

You can pull up past posts about topics here by using the search feature to search or by clicking on the tab below the post, which should bring up all posts with that tag!

LAWS WITH CONSIDERATIONS OF SLAVE STATUS AND COLOR : VIRGINIA

 Excerpt pages 8-9

... It had not always been that way. The arrival of the first Africans in Virginia in 1619 had not, in itself, signaled the beginning of a fully formed slave system. True, the English in Virginia had the example of the Spanish and Portuguese sugar plantations in the Caribbean and South America; and the Dutch would later establish a thriving transatlantic slave trade system that kept those plantations supplied with labor. But not all blacks in early Virginia were enslaved Some were kept as servants, in temporary bondage.  Others bought their freedom and moved to the Eastern Shore, where many purchased land, married, raised families, and hired or bought laborers of their own.  To meet their insatiable appetite for labor, white Virginians would make the transition gradually from white English servants to black slaves over the course of the of the seventeenth century. Time and again in these early years, the newly formed assembly in the provincial capital of Jamestown legislated what it meant to have white skin or black, to be free or enslaved. The representatives, called burgesses, debated such questions as "Are all men, black and white, permitted to carry guns?  (NO, only whites, 1639)  Are African women counted as tithable **** in the same way as all men, white and black, sixteen years of age or older?  (Yes, 1643). To clarify, are free African women taxable, as well as enslaved? (Yes, but white women remain exempt, 1668). Is the child of an enslaved woman and an Englishman free?  (NO, the child take the condition of the mother, 1662) So then, the child of a free white woman and a free black man is free? (Not quite; such children will be held in service until their thirtieth birthday. In addition, the mother must pay a fine of 15 pounds sterling or herself be sold into servitude for five years, 1691).  May blacks and whites marry?  (NO, 1691, and 1705. To prevent such "abominable mixture and spurious issue," the white person will be jailed for six months and pay a fine of 10 pounds sterling. And clergymen who conduct such ceremonies will be fined ten thousand pounds of tobacco - half of which goes to the informer.).....

Note on word tithable : Explanation here from LIBRARY OF VIRGINIA : TITHABLE LAW EXPLAINED

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JEFFERSON'S DAUGHTERS by CATHERINE KERRISON : ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY BOOK REVIEW

This book was outstanding!

It's a biography of three of Jefferson's daughters.  They were Martha and Maria, by his wife Martha Wayles, and Harriet, by Sally Hemings, who was his mistress or common-law wife but also his slave. The man who became 3rd President of the United States (1801 -1809) had a long marriage-like relationship with Sally but could not lawfully marry her if he wanted to because she was also his slave. Martha, his daughter, lived a long life and had thirteen children. Her descendants were the ones to refute that Jefferson had children with Hemings. Maria, his younger daughter, died young also due to pregnancy.  

Early in the book we are presented with a genealogy chart. I always love to reference these charts in books and it is the beginning of surprises. If you, like me, thought of Sally Hemings as isolated, well, we were wrong. The Hemings family were all special among slaves, brought into the Jefferson family as "House" slaves, often given special educations that not only helped the family but provided useful skills for them to earn their living should they be free.  Initially they were brought in as belonging to his wife Martha Wayles, who he dearly loved and lost young because of childbirth.

No other book I've encountered does such a good job of showing how Sally Hemings was not sequestered in a secret room adjacent to his or a secret at Monticello. Though as he retired and entertained fewer visitors his private life could remain fairly private, what the slaves of Monticello knew was that the Hemings family were special.

Sally Hemings was significantly of European DNA (i.e. "White,") and so their daughter Harriet was 7/8ths "White," but still enslaved. Since relationships of various sorts between European descent and African descent people occurred before and after the American Revolution, the question of who was or was not ever a slave or a free person or who had bought their freedom from slavery was something up for discussion and legal determinations. Surprisingly, Sally's sister lived as the known common-law wife of another white man not far away - and apparently they were not given grief over this. 

This book also showed that Jefferson himself must have aided Harriet (as well as his sons) in leaving slavery and that Harriet might have had to go through her life as a free White woman, married to a White man who had to keep her secret and might not have ever seen her parents or siblings again. (There is no evidence to refute this, but my guess is that there was some channel of communication, for her older brother, who could have been freed three years earlier, waited until she was 21 and he was 24 before they left together. Testimonials of where she went and so on came down in history from other of her children who were freed.)

Harriet's special skill was to be weaving. She not only learned the traditional skills but Jefferson also had her trained on the latest more commercial contraption showing foresight that she might have to work to support herself.

Much to my delight - and increasing my respect for author Catherine Kerrison - was to learn the extensive genealogy she did in order to locate Harriet.  She had about 48 possible Harriets, supposing Harriet  only changed her surname when she left, or perhaps married soon after leaving estate, in the Washington D.C. area, which is where family history says she went to, at least right after leaving. She eliminated them one by one and came up with two strong candidates, or maybe just one, but this was inconclusive.  (It seems to me that some day some genetic link could be established if Harriet has living descendants.)

As a result, I will be excerpting this book through the next several weeks bringing to you some key points that I think will be of interest to anyone interested in American History, and especially African-American History.

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AFRICAN AMERICAN REGISTRY presents THE HEADRIGHT PROPERTY SYSTEM IN AMERICA

THIS IS A HISTORY - EDUCATIONAL WEBSITE that is searchable by topic including by names.

AFRICAN AMERICAN REGISTRY ORG - SEARCH FOR TOPIC

I tried the words ATLANTA and ACTIVIST

Excerpt: Slavery and the headright system

Plantation owners benefited from the headright system when they paid for the Middle Passage. This, and the increased amount of money required to bring indentured servants to the colonies, contributed to the shift toward chattel slavery.  Until 1699, an enslaved person was worth a headright of fifty acres. According to records, in the 1670s, over 400 enslaved people were used as headrights in Virginia.

This number increased in the 1680s and 1690s. Many families gained power in the colonies by receiving large tracts of land when they imported enslaved people. For example, George Menefie purchased sixty enslaved people and received 3,000 acres in 1638. In 1699, it was decided that a headright would only be granted to free citizens and that transporting indentured laborers or slaves would no longer be a guarantor of land.

Issues with land patent records

According to records, there was a large discrepancy between the number of headrights issued and the number of new residents in the colonies. This gap may be explained by the high mortality rates of Blacks and the inhumane conditions they endured crossing the Atlantic Ocean to the colonies. Landowners would receive headrights for the dead; thus, the gap would widen between population growth and the number of headrights issued. Another explanation suggests that the secretary's office that issued the headrights grew laxer. There were few regulations in place to keep the headright system in check. Because of this, several headrights were claimed multiple times, and people took advantage of the lack of governance.

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HOW TO DEAL WITH SURNAME MYSTERIES #3 THE RATHER RECENT NOTION OF SURNAMES : AFRICAN AMERICAN - BLACK

HOW TO DEAL WITH SURNAME MYSTERIES  #3  THE RATHER RECENT NOTION OF SURNAMES  :  AFRICAN AMERICAN - BLACK

Some people are telling me that using the term "Black" is now correct rather than African-American. Well....  all things being not equal...

I know that European-American is the equal of the term African-American but in the United States anyway, we have a very mixed society. I feel as if the term Black (or White) is actually general and assumes much based on a visual interpretation of someone's body. 

To learn what specific country or tribe one's ancestors left perhaps a DNA test is what to do. For today, using these tests, a person can say they are Nigerian-American... 

Using traditional genealogy, the find of archival documents, I've helped more than one person discover their American slave ancestors. But in one case we learned their Black ancestors were not slaves at all but were "People of Color" who came free and into New Orleans. 

We cannot assume that every person we encounter whose skin is of a darker shade has African roots, or if they self identify as Black, that they are of slave ancestry.  And as for Reparations, we cannot assume every person's roots were in Slave-America.

A person needs to ask themselves WHY they are doing genealogy. There are very many reasons why. If meeting people you are genetically related to is the reason, you no longer have to totally rely on documents held in archives. If you are preparing for Reparations, well I suspect a DNA test will be required plus the genealogy. 

African-American slaves...  on records in the United States, rarely are listed by names recorded in Farm Books or census. Slave Schedules on the 1850 and 1860 Federal United States Census offer statistics. But then, early census in the U.S. also only listed the head of household and statistics. Sometimes on contracts for buying or selling of slaves people are named. There has been some inference that when a White slave-owner does list the names, it is equal to recognizing those people as his genetic children. That assumption may be going too far. 

The Library of Congress has the largest collection of interest to those researching African slave ancestors. In addition, Slave Narratives, taken by writers employed by the Works Project Administration re President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, is held by many libraries. Recently on YouTube I found some RECORDED slave narratives! 

As for surnames, after liberation, some ex slaves did take the name of the slave-owner - the estate they lived on, without being genetically related to an owner...

But I think for the purposes of this post we need to go to the fact that most enslaved people did not go on record on U.S. census - and other documents - as having surnames until they were freed.  We have some incorrect notions about what happened when being free was official as well, as history and genealogy has proven this depended very much on individual situations, places and dates. We may know that slaves wanted to escape, wanted their freedom, and some managed to do this because of the Underground Railroad, but others had no idea what was next for them. Slavery was an economic system and the slave was tied financially to the slave holder, but emancipation did not always or automatically mean that the now free person was going to leave the homestead or plantation, not right away anyway. They needed to find viable employment and a place to live. To pack up and leave on foot on short notice to nowhere?

For many reasons people like to stay put. Our economic situation in large cities right now is typical.  Many people have become homeless because they can no longer afford to live where they have for years but they are not moving out of their home turf. They have no urge to leave a place they have become accustomed to, where they feel connected, where they know some people, how to get around, and where to find what they need.  

Not everyone wanted to leave a warm climate for a cold one. How do you know for sure that moving to a northern city will be a positive move? Point is, Emancipation came. The day came in which a person who never earned an income - or a viable one - but who had at least a rudimentary roof over their head, clothes on their back, and food in their stomach, was going to have to find some other way to earn money, a living, and pay for these things. Some slave owners did decide to go ahead and pay their ex-slaves or let people remain on the property. The Big Plantation existed but believe it or not most Slave Owners had only one or two and sometime the Slave lived in the house with the family.

As slaves did not have the right to property such as land or have money in a bank account until they were freed, the Freedmans Bureau created the first place for them to do that, the Freedmans Bank. Unfortunately, this bank didn't last and was only in operation for a short while.

The Freedmans Bank records I've used are rather limited, but I've found some valuable information in them because the person's name was unusual, or the person had not moved from where they had a bank account and were also on census. 

Freed people were told they could choose their own surname.

Though once enslaved, many chose the name of a President of the United States, such as Jefferson or Washington, though they were not slave owned by these men. 

THERE WAS NO LEGAL REASON WHY ANY ONE PERSON HAD TO ACCEPT OR USE a SURNAME meaning that members of the same family could choose different surnames or a person could try out a surname and decide on a different one. This is a research obstacle that one can sometimes not surmount, though I've had some great luck along with determination to find more information on people's ancestors who were once slaves. You may have to do some of the most dogged but incredibly interesting research that goes well beyond what databases can offer. 

I find that information held by churches can be valuable in this quest. Also carefully inspect death, birth, and marriage certificates for any notes that might have been made. I've found mention of a person's previous surname, not related to earlier marriage, in a few of these documents. When you find the name of a Slave-Owner or ex-Slave Owner, you may want to look for any legal documents such as land purchases and wills in order to learn more. Some of these landowners had land in more than one locality but, especially if they were rich and had many slaves, they may also be mentioned in local histories.

The African-American - Black way in contemporary times is to invent and create interesting and unusual given names, almost as if the surname is not so special. It's because of these given special names that I've been lead to some useful information. 

This post is one of a series on the subject.  Click on the tag Surname Help - AWG to get to the posts.

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Image is from Graphics Fairy

THE LAST SLAVE SHIP (CLOTILDA) by BEN RAINES : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY BOOK REVIEW

Subtitled, The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning by Ben Raines

Fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed, a ship full of slaves did indeed arrive in Mobile, Alabama. These Africans had faces decorated by scarification in Africa which would set them apart from other Black people already in the slave states. The voyage to Africa - Dohomey - and back was the work of businessmen who were also enjoying the prospect of flaunting the law and winning a bet as well hoping to enjoy wealth from the sell of humans. The descendants of these slaves founded their own town, Africatown, and as communities go, are close, bound by the history of their ancestors. The discovery of the ship was also an adventure, and takes up a good portion of the book.

The sailship Clotilda was built in 1855, and the voyage occurred in 1860, so while slavery was not yet outlawed, bringing more slaves in was.  It was captained by it's previous owner.  The eight-six foot two-masted schooner was not at all the type of ship best used for transporting slaves.  Usually a slave ship held between 500 to 1000 humans.  However - and I know this sounds ironic - but British and American authorities were on the seas looking for illegal slavers - and so this ship was not likely to catch their attention yet there were risks involved of arrest and the loss of their investments.

Page 29 "By the 1850's. thirty-six ships that Britain had assigned to its West African Squadron had captured sixteen hundred slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans en route to the United States. ... in May of 1860, just as he (Foster) was outfitting the Clotilda for its slaving run, U.S. revenue cutters around Key West intercepted three ships headed to port with 1,432 enslaved Africans on board." Page 30 "The outlay of $35,000 often brings $500,000." Page 32 ..."March 3, 1860, Foster kissed his wife goodbye and made the short walk from the boardinghouse (where they lived)...A heavy bag slung over his shoulder hid twenty-seven pounds of gold...

False papers ready, the ship was cleared for a run to St. Thomas...

Page 40 The Kingdom of Dahomey (West Africa) was "well known as one of the most violent and ruthless societies in human history... built on war."

Basically, this tribe of West African people waged war on others just to collect humans they could sell into slavery as a central part of their economy.  Page 40 "Historians estimate the Kingdom of Dahomey may have been responsible for capturing and deporting about 30 % of all the Africans sold in bondage worldwide between 1660 and the 1880's." The British had tried to negotiate with their King that this slave trade be stopped but was not successful.

Once the deals had been made, the ship did not depart immediately. The slaves were taken to Ouidah, and locked up in the barracoon*** for three weeks. This sea port had been build to accommodate the slave trades with forts that had been built by the French, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, and English, and the newly captured were treated as good as cattle.  The slaves were young adults for the most part. 125 were selected but in the last moments, they Clotilda sailed away with fifteen left on shore, the abandonment costly, because it appeared they might be caught.  Most of these people had never seen the ocean or been on a ship. When they arrived in Alabama they also came into a foreign environment of swamps full of cane plants that grew 30 to 40 feet high, spiders, flies, and mosquitoes, and reptiles. They were held for eleven days, being kept a secret.  The secret could not be kept for long for the departure had been in the national newspapers and the return too. The men faced legal ramifications, which were not severe.

The slaves were sold, and the friendships formed in the months in which they had been held together were maintained.  Some of these people were interviewed and the content of those interviews still exists.

During the Civil war Page 117 "The last battle of the war was fought around the abandoned city of Blakeley, just on the other side of the swamp from the Meaher's sawmill and shipyard at Magazine Point.  You could hear the booming of cannons, which thundered for several days, from Meaher's front poerch, softening up the Confederate lines before the inevitable Union assault....  Sixteen thousand Union troops, including five thousand men in all African- American United States Colored Troops infantry regiments, fought four thousand Confederates for seven days.  In the final battle, the African-American infantry companies joined together, forming the entire right flank of the Union forces.  The African-American troops, comprised of the formerly enslaved and free men alike, suffered the highest casualties at Blakeley, but also won the final, decisive battle."

This book is about adventure and survival.  There is a lot to learn about this time and place in American history from it. 

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*** A Spanish word that means barracks

THE HOMESTEAD ACT OF 1862 PROVIDED 160 ACRES OF LAND #1 THE HISTORY OF LAND GRANTS FOR HOMESTEADING

You've probably heard "40 acres and a mule" is an ideal family farmstead, but consider that 160 acres of land provided that the family might be able to divide that up as children grew to maturity and another generation or two could live there. But then what?  For a small filing fee, even a freed slave could apply to homestead land.  An immigrant who was not yet an American citizen could apply and get land.  And, though women's liberation (Feminism) was the cause of few, you could apply as a woman. If there's a chance that one of your American ancestors claimed land and that can be a very interesting thing to add to your family history research project.

THE HOMESTEAD ACT of 1862 REMAINED IN PLACE FOR THE NEXT 124 YEARS and 270 million acres were claimed and settled, which turns out to be about 10% of the United States. (You could still homestead in Alaska for another decade.)

Most of the land was "unsettled" such as in the prairie lands, though today we know that notions that "nobody" lived in these places is often not correct because Native American did live there.

New settlers had to live on the land they wanted for a continuous five years and improve it.  For some this was living off the land and living in an underground house until an above ground house could be built. Cutting down trees or tilling soil could be considered an improvement.

Today I think of the modern Tiny House movement because families back in the day often lived in a house that was basically one room. Today, we seriously question if displacing people so that gentrification can take place is socially responsible behavior.

HISTORY COM - Homestead Act Basics

NATIONAL ARCHIVES GOV - HOMESTEAD ACT including some documents

Next post I'll tell you how to find these documents.

This post is part of a series.  To pull up the series, click on the tag Help - Land Grants- AWG

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image is from Graphics Fairy

SWANEE RIVER

Image from Dover Publications

GREEN BOOK GUIDES REVEALED PLACES WHERE AFRICAN-AMERICAN WERE WELCOME

New York Public Library provides the GREEN BOOKS.  These were like local travel guides to help African-Americans find out where they were welcome when they traveled. 

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY - GREEN BOOKS - AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

EXCERPT: From 1936 to 1966, Victor Green, a postal worker who worked in New Jersey but lived in Harlem, published the directories known today as the Green Book. (The Actual titles were variously" The Negro Motorist Green Book; The Negro Traveler's Green Book; the Travelers' Green Book.) These listed hotels, restaurants, beauty salons, night clubs, bars, gas stations, etc. where Black travelers would be welcome.  In an age of sundown towns, segregation, and lynching, the Green Book became an indispensable tool for safe navigation.

A valuable aspect of African American History. 

You may find that some of the locations appear on the 1940 census and have residents.

HUNTINGTON LIBRARY DOCUMENTS : SALT WORKERS IN WEST VIRGINIA and SLAVERY

LA TIMES LEGACY OF INDUSTRY FUELED BY SLAVERY : SALT WORKERS WEST VIRGINIA by Makeda Easter - an excellent article.


Excerpt:  Inside the cramped and dusty attic overlooking the pale green Kanawha River in the Appalachian Mountains, stacks of 100 year old business records - deposit books, letters from customers, employee records - balanced precariously on cabinets, lined shelves and sat scattered across the wooden floor.

***

The Huntington has acquired at auction documents of the slave trade and Underground Rail Road.  This acquisition is exciting to me as a genealogist.

HUNTINGTON ORG:   This link tells more about the salt works acquisition as well as another important slavery acquisition.


Excerpt: The first group of materials includes the papers of Zachariah Taylor Shugart... a Quaker abolitionist who operated an Underground Railroad stop at his farm in Cass County, Michigan. The centerpiece of the collection is an account ledger which contains the names of 137 men and women who passed through Shugart's farm while trying to reach freedom in Canada...

...

The second collection is the archive of some 2,000 letters and accounts documenting the history of the Dickinson and Shrewsbury saltworks, a major operation founded in 1808 in what is now Kanawha County, West Virginia...

FREEDMAN BANK RECORDS - USEFULNESS

The Freedman Bank Records are sometimes useful to genealogy researchers and are available through FamilySearch, some online library collections, and other genealogy databases.    

Here is my experience with them:

First, after emancipation from slavery, citizens who had been enslaved were allowed to own bank accounts for the first time. However, at this time not all ex-slaves had names they liked. Some continued to use a surname of their latest slave-owner, for example, but they were free to rename themselves. As a result, a number of relatives might choose different surnames. And some would rename themselves first and last. And some tried on a surname and didn't like it and changed it again. Changing names did not require a legal process.

Came the day that an African American client of mine, who really only needed his mother's death certificate, and learned the oral history he had been given was not correct when he read it, asked me to go a little further. Sure, that his mother's name was highly unusual, I gave it a search in Freedman Bank and because the name was so unusual, I was lead to that his mother had been named after her ex-slave grandmother. (From there I proofed as much as possible.)  This was perhaps the fastest genealogy search I ever had that lead to the enslaved ancestor.

Another factor to consider is that the Freedman Bank didn't last too long.  According to FamilySearch, The Freedman's Savings and Trust company failed in 1874 and many lost their savings.

Additionally, I found surnames that were German or otherwise not distinctly African-American or of English origins in this database. Some people who were not ex-slaves or African American did deposit in Freedman Bank. The decision to have an account was probably as easy as that they lived near a branch or believed in the cause.  So these are BANK RECORDS and not everyone in the database was ever a slave.

And consider that ex-slaves may have deposited in one place and then moved.

Overall, I don't think this database is helpful to most people but it can't be skipped in case it is!

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SLAVE NARRATIVES - HISTORY and TESTIMONY FOR GENEALOGY

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS - INFORMATION ON SLAVE NARRATIVES

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938  DIGITAL IMAGES ONLINE OF TYPED NARRATIVES.

FROM THE SITE: 2300 first person accounts of slavery and 500 black and white photographs of former slaves... The published volumes containing edited slave narratives are arranged alphabetically by the state in which the interviews took place and are there under by the SURNAME of the INFORMANT (i.e. the slave).... Federal field workers were given instructions on what kinds of questions to ask their informants and how to capture their dialects. The result of which may sometimes be offensive to today's readers...

COMMENTARY:  

Realize that the slaves interviewed were old people in their 80's and 90's. 

I've had ONE genealogy project in which I believed I'd found the FAMILY of the owner of a slave who gave a narrative.  The ex-slave's story was about being cruelly abused by a certain man who was likely one of this family's members in South Carolina. The North Carolina branch of this family had not owned slaves and my client said he'd been told by his father that they did not believe in slavery.

What a find if your ancestor is one of the 500 ex slaves whose photos appear.

For many Americans with Southern U.S. roots (though there were slaves in states not thought of as Southern) slave owners and/or slaves are part of their ancestry.  

I suggest you scan through this collection just to get a feel for it. The collection is NOT inclusive of every ex-slave, just a sampling of those still alive and willing to be interviewed. Try scanning for names in your family. Tie this in with whatever census information.  The place of interview is NOT always the place the person was enslaved.

The interviewing writers were told what questions to ask and did their best to record the stories as part of a Works Projects Administration job.  If you have reason to believe one of your family members worked on this assignment, the writer's names appear also.

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