HOW DOES SHE FIND THE NAME OF THE SLAVES WHO MIGHT BE HER ANCESTORS? SHE HAS THE NAME OF THE SLAVE OWNER! (A BIT OF A TUTORIAL!)

Q

Hi AW!  I've got the name of the slave owner. How do I find the names of the slaves he owned, which I think includes a line of my ancestry?

Hannah

A 

I'm impressed Hannah; I'm going to believe you without knowing how you found the name of the slave owner, and for the purposes of this answer, for the sake of other readers of Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot, I'm going to go over some aspects of African-American genealogy research.

First, it's American research. So, do your UNITED STATES CENSUS work as far back as you can. Something I used to do all the time with microfilm, and I think we should still do in databases, is to examine the pages of the census for the surrounding area when we find a family group - just to see if there are others local who might have the same surname or be related. So forward and back, please!

The first United States census in which the freed slaves are named is 1870, which was after the Civil War. Until then people other than the head of household (Be that free or not) were counted as statistics and names were not given. But if you can find the family on the 1870 you probably already have the names of some people who were in slavery in the location. (If by chance any of your ancestors fell into the category of Free, you may be able to go back by comparing the people on the 1870 with those statistics re living in the same area and same head of household as well.)

Do the census work for the SLAVE OWNER if you find one - and any legal documents pertaining to them and their family regarding inheritance.

A caution when using databases. Often I skip the question of race or color as I think this has been subjective. I will note it, but it may not be the same answer for the same person as the decades go by.  (B - Black.  N - Negro.  M - Mulatto (mixed race). W - White.)

Check the FREEDMAN BANK RECORDS just in case. I personally have not had a whole lot of luck with these but I have once or twice had a breakthrough - because the persons had unusual and consistent names. 

My photo of part of the exhibit which is a display in a hallway.

YOU MAY WANT TO VISIT THE LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY - CENTRAL "DOWNTOWN" TO SEE A SMALL BUT WELL DONE EXHIBIT ABOUT THE FREEDMAN BANK RECORDS. It was put together by librarians from the Genealogy and Economics departments and is in a hallway.

OK so... IF YOU HAVE THE NAME OF THE SLAVE OWNER and the NAME or/and LOCATION of the farm, plantation, or place of residence for the slaves, CHECK THE LOCAL HISTORY to see if there is any mentions. Is there a biography of the slave owner, for instance? A biography might lead you to more information about the slave owner and who his or her relatives are: Wills or Bills of Sale may have more information.

Check to see if there are any genealogy groups local to that area, especially with African-American focus. (At the same time be careful to discern what "oral history" and archival documents or support documents there are.)

Check to see if there are any existing local newspapers and how far back they go, likely news that may apply will mention the slave owner.

But to be more focused on your question THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES brags that it has the largest collection relating to the African- American experience.

Also check SLAVE NARRATIVES. https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/

Excerpt: Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA). At the conclusion of the Slave Narrative project, a set of edited transcripts was assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. In 2000-2001, with major support from the Citigroup Foundation, the Library digitized the narratives from the microfilm edition and scanned from the originals 500 photographs, including more than 200 that had never been microfilmed or made publicly available. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs divisions of the Library of Congress.

I'm going to this link https://guides.loc.gov/manuscripts-illustrated-guide/african-american-history

Excerpt: The Manuscript Division has one of the nation's most valuable collections for the study of African-American history and culture. The Library's holdings include information about slavery and the slave trade as well as other aspects of plantation life. Papers of slaveholders provide one view of slavery, and slave narratives give another. Diaries and journals further illuminate lives spent in slavery and freedom. The manuscripts of black and white abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and Salmon P. Chase describe the efforts of those who attempted to alleviate the plight of slaves, and the records of the American Colonization Society detail the saga of African Americans who left the United States and established the West African nation of Liberia in the mid- nineteenth century. Papers relating to black participation and victimization in the Civil War abound, and African-American history during Reconstruction is reflected in collections pertaining to newly elected black officials such as John Mercer Langston, Blanche K. Bruce, Hiram R. Revels, and Francis L. Cardozo.

https://www.loc.gov/item/mm82057687/#:~:text=Correspondence%2C%20speeches%2C%20writings%2C%20court,during%20the%20American%20Civil%20War. This is the link to the Black History Collection. (I'm aware that Black is a preferred term these days, but for the purposes of our research we search for a collection title as it was when it came into being and we will encounter other terms we may not like as well.)

Correspondence, speeches, writings, court records, slave records, slave deeds, emancipation and manumission papers, birth and marriage records, wills, family and genealogical papers, military records, financial records, ships' papers, broadsides, newspaper clippings, printed matter, and other papers pertaining to African Americans from the colonial period through the early twenty-first century. Subjects include the slave trade, slaves, medical care of slaves, fugitive slaves, abolition, emancipation, manumission, freed persons, civil rights, political rights and suffrage, and military service, in particular, during the American Civil War.

THERE ARE OTHER COLLECTIONS AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES THAT MAY BE OF VALUE, but again, don't forget the more local resources, and that includes the small libraries in small towns and historical society collections!

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YOU CAN GET CENSUS INFORMATION 1950 -2010 with HEIR PROVISION

CENSUS - UNITED STATES OFFICIAL SITE

72 years of privacy guard most of us from having our private information displayed to the world - at least from this agency.

You may have reason not to want that information out - now or forever.

Maybe you were in a hospital or shelter or orphanage. 

Maybe you don't want your family to know where you are.

Maybe you want to die without anyone else knowing it.

But so many people are living beyond 72 years of age these days.

The 72 years was originally based on the idea that most people would not be alive when this information about them would be made available.

As a researcher you can occasionally bypass the 72 year wait.

Read the forms at the official U.S. Census site and see if you are eligible to have them do a search for an individual.  The reason will be to confirm an age for a delayed birth certificate or locating someone due to an inheritance, some implied legal reason.

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TWO MORE YEARS FROM TODAY'S DATE : THE 1950 CENSUS

STEVE MORSE and JOEL WEINTRAUB on the 1950 CENSUS - YOU WON'T FIND NAMES!

72 years of privacy for census was determined long ago when 72 years was one long life.  I sometimes wonder if this will be changed as our lifespans increase.

You can read the entire paper put out by these two gentlemen who have helped genealogists get through databases such as ship records and past census.

When the 1950 is first released you'll have to search page by page through Enumeration Districts until the massive undertaking of listing by name - indexing - happens.

The U.S. population after World War II was BOOMING (as in Baby Boomer) so while I have no doubt it eventually will be done, you may not want to wait another two to four years.

I remember when the 1940 came out.  I headed for my nearest Family History Center of the Latter Day Saints and I sat there for hours searching certain records in New Jersey... And what I proved weeks into it was that the first-generation immigrants and their children were no longer living where they had been in 1930, no longer in ethnic ghettos but out to the suburbs, even to other counties and states, some in old age homes.

I imagine the 1950 will show this movement into suburbs and other counties and states even more so. So many GI's got houses on the GI bill which afforded them small homes in the burbs!

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Click on the tab  Genealogy Help - 1950 Census to bring up the series!

I'M FOR the CITIZENSHIP QUESTION on U.S. CENSUS and AGAINST REPARATIONS - HEAR ME OUT

A friend I talked to said a Japanese friend of hers, whose parents were relocated during World War II and lost everything, refuses to cooperate with the U.S. Census because he says our government used it to locate Japanese-Americans or Japanese aliens to do this. I'm not sure officials did use the census to locate Japanese people or Japanese-Americans for the purpose of relocation. I realize this was a terrible experience for those effected by it - whole communities.

I know that here and now, if there were any group to be targeted for any purpose whatsoever, there would be ways to find those in the group. The fact is, there are other ways to locate people these days besides a census, many more ways. 

I suspect that back in the day authorities knew where ethnic groups were ghettoized or where they preferred to live, among others who spoke the same language and had the same cultural expectations.  My own ancestors lived in these ethnic ghettos as immigrants.

Our multiculturalism and mixing no longer guarantees that a given name or a surname identifies the person on a census as one ethnicity or another. Therefore I wonder about the validity of "identity politics."  Are we not creatures of personality and character and soul and not just what we appear on the surface to be?  Our own self-identity is what matters to us now. Besides thinking or feeling yourself to be a certain race or ethnicity though the facts (such as a DNA test or genealogy research) may indicate that you are a mix, that self identity also includes our gender and sexual orientation. The fact is that census takers used observation to determine that someone was male or female, W, M, or C, back in the day.  (And I've seen the person considered C or M in the South to be considered W in the North on census.)

I had a client who immediately assumed because some names of his ancestors were German that they were Jewish. He was wrong. I asked my friend who is upset about the Japanese internment, well what if they used the census to identify and locate Jews for round up? She gulped.

What is the purpose of a census?  It's statistical. It is used to determine what's what - what's needed - and to ask for money from the government (as well as common citizens through taxation or donations) for various purposes and to make policy.

Certainly no census has ever been done for the purposes of future genealogy buffs. 

An example that many Americans can understand is homeless counts, which are usually under counts since many homeless people do not cooperate or cannot be found to be counted.  Agencies and the government look to this count to ask for and get funding appropriate to their location. They don't get enough money to deal with all the people who come through their doors asking for help because maybe a third of those who are actually homeless were counted.

We can't know if we will be for or against any particular change that might be based on census, but we certainly would like to know how many citizens there are so we can also know how many are voting.  We'd like to know how many children live in a district to plan for their education.  And I think we'd like to know how many people are living in the U.S. who want to be citizens.

Several years ago I met a school teacher who showed up to teach in the fall and had an almost empty classroom.  Due to housing costs many students had left that school and their parents seemed to not have re-enrolled them elsewhere as there had been no requests to have grades or other documents transferred to another district. (It was assumed that these families had become homeless and not enrolled their children in any school.)

And there is a precedent as any genealogist who uses the past U.S. Census knows of asking these questions: Are you an alien? In process of citizenship? What year did you become a citizen? (And we genealogists depend on these documents to find out where people came from so we can cross the ocean with our research.)

I once wondered if my own ancestors hid out, afraid to answer the door because of the conditions they lived in prior to America, but I did find them - their surname horribly misspelled - on one of those pages that is faded and damaged.

There is also a historical precedent for blocking or not allowing the citizenship process to go forwards which prevented those of a certain ethnicity - including mine - to be considered a potential threat to the security of the United States because of World War I. Thus some immigrants who wanted citizenship years earlier had to wait until after that war.

As for reparations, I cannot even imagine how we would decide who deserves "reparations" for slavery prior to the Emancipation decades ago other than using DNA tests and coming up with some mathematical formula for how many dollars for what percentage of slave-identified genetics. And what of so many of us who never owned slaves and come from families that never owned slaves?  Why would we pay, assume we are "guilty" of enslaving for our skin color, and owe others based on their racial identity because of our racial identity?  That's not fair.  I'm not responsible for what anyone in my family history (and mine came here after the abolishment of slavery) did in the past.  I'm not responsible for the actions of people I never met and wasn't raised by. I'm only responsible as an adult for my own actions in this life. 

As they say, you can't choose your family, you can only choose your friends. I don't want to punish others for their ancestry any more than I want to punish some upstanding citizen who happens to have a criminal in the family. What about those people who have slave heritage but generations later have moved beyond it or those who have African heritage but were never slaves? 

Should those of Catholic heritage ask for reparations from WASPS because they were horribly exploited by the Robber Barons as immigrants (pre-union) who worked six days a week, back to back "shifts" of 14-16 hours, for example?  

When does prejudice end?  

It ends with our personal behavior in this life.

One person mentioned to me the reparations for Jews who's families were killed in the Holocaust or had property seized.  While I don't know exactly how that worked in Germany - or Israel - there are some differences.

The first is that living people were able to PROVE what they lost, mostly because it was fairly recent history, so names, photographs, addresses, titles to property and so on could be used. Secondly, Jewish-Americans have told me that they did not ALL get the money. Rather one person in their family proved what they had lost, did the applications and got whatever was offered.  So they would say to me, "I didn't apply because so and so already got the money." And it was generally not much.  Generally it was a token - a token apology of sorts.

It's not that I don't have a heart.  I'd rather see the money spent on education and other programs to help those who need help here and now, no matter what their heritage.

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This post was edited for clarity on September 3, 2019

CENSUS WORKERS for the 2020 CENSUS

I got a call from a friend, asking me if I was going to apply to be a census worker for the 2020 census or volunteer for the 1950 census project. These projects are going to be a HUGE endeavor, the 2020 many times more HUGE than the 2010.  The population expanded rapidly. It was the post World War II baby boom. Suburbs were being built and Americans were expanding out from living in cities. GI's were using the low interest mortgage rates for veterans to be home owners.  Stay at home moms were financially possible. Some of us are going to read this 1950 census in 2020 (or thereafter) and just wish we were living back in the day.

Genealogists get very excited about census and census is called "The backbone of American genealogy."

I have such memories of the 2010 reveal. The NATIONAL ARCHIVES SITE was not functioning completely or well for a while as people rushed to use it. Of course other database owners attempted to have theirs up better and faster.  Indexing lagged behind. Some pages were missing or out of order. I used the National Archives site at a few libraries including my local LDS Family History Center to get in there with my list of people who had not appeared on 1940.

These mix ups and frustrations one also experienced when the Ellis Island ship manifests site first went up.  I remember finding ways to get what I needed, ways to mine the data.  

I spent hours reading 1940 census pages one after another because they were not indexed yet with mixed results. I still wish I were turning microfilm rather than clicking the mouse till I need a forefinger joint replacement. 

I've learned a bit about the data on census and why looking at the name of the census taker can be a good thing. For instance I noticed German surnames of census takers associated with assignments of going into Polish and Hungarian neighborhoods. The language the census taker speaks may reflect the spelling of the surnames.

So pre-2010 of course I applied to be a census worker.  I took a class and the test and got an A.  Soon I got a call asking if I speak Spanish.  I do not.  I didn't get the job.  They wanted people to be in their own neighborhoods and mine at the time probably had a significant percentage of Spanish speakers. I met the man who did get the job.  He was frustrated.  He said that he had to go back to a building three times because he was having trouble being let in. People were not answering their doors. After three tries his supervisor would go with him and then would make the building manager let them in. Overall they thought they were encountering illegal residents who did not want to be on census or talk to anyone governmental. Probably true.

So I suspect in our political climate (i.e "Build the Wall") that the 2020 census next year will be fraught with such issues.  WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF CENSUS.  It's a statistical analysis that helps our government understand the population and these statistics are often cited when our officials are looking for causes or funding.

Although I do not believe in the past the census information was shared with the INS (or equivalent) people who are not citizens may worry.

Think of the past census, say taken of those Ellis Island immigrants in which census takers asked people if they were citizens, if they were aliens, if they were in process, and what year they were naturalized.  There is a historical precedent for asking residents about their immigration status. Sometimes when I cannot find people who left a ship on a census I wonder if they hid out for the same reasons as the people do in recent history.

C 2019  All Rights Reserved  including Internet and International Rights.  This post has been edited and expanded July 2019

HOW CAN I FIND MY GREAT GREAT GRANDMOTHER'S SLAVE SHIP AND PLACE OF BIRTH?

QUESTION for ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY

HOW CAN I FIND MY GREAT GREAT GREAT GRANDMOTHER'S SLAVE SHIP AND PLACE OF BIRTH IN AFRICA?

ANSWER

There is no one way this is done, when it is possible.  Learning the actual nation can be about DNA rather than following documentation as the documentation may not exist.  Slave Ship databases may help you learn about what ships went where but do not have slave names.  But in order to gather information to set you on the right path you still have to methodically go back in time and learn as much as you can about the history and culture of that time and place. Don't take wild leaps going back 100 years or more. Also expect to research around her, following her children and other relations you may have never met.

You have shown me your great great great grandmother is on the 1870 census and so let's take a good look at that census page.

Here is what I think:

First this is only five years after Emancipation and yet she is living in a farmstead with a planter and her daughter and their family where she is listed as being the mother in law of the head of household.  The value of this farmstead is such I believe that this planter did not earn a huge sum of money in five years.  I also see that the neighbors are listed as W while he and his family are listed as B.  They are not living in a B ghetto.  I believe that pre emancipation this person was free so look at the regular U.S.  census (free person's rather than slave registers) and continue backward as far as you can, to come up with a possible date of freedom.  Maybe the planter was born free.  Maybe he bought the freedom of his wife and mother in law.  If so there may be records of the transactions or court hearings.

Then there is the issue of his wife who would be a child of your GGG Grandmother.   I see based on children that they have been together for a good 10 years before Emancipation. I want you to follow her and her family forward.  I want you to see if you can get a possible death era or date for her.  Then check with the present day county of their location to find out where any possible death records might be kept.  it is possible that if the daughter lived as many years as her mother than she just might be on a civil register.  If they didn't have civil records in this time and place, perhaps church records.  You want to find the daughter's death record because it may name her parents even if it is a notation by a priest at her funeral Mass.  Likewise following the GGG Grandmother forward  you may try for a record of her death, hoping that there is familial information on it.

Obituaries are not out of the question and local Louisiana historical societies and libraries may help.

You show that on the 1870 your GGG Grandmother is listed as coming from Africa and family history is that she came into New Orleans.  You want to check New Orleans resources.  Make some phone calls and find out what they have or know that might help you.

Additionally the surname of the family group in 1870 is not the surname spelling that was brought forward.  Be sensitive to that.  I ran a Freedman's bank record check for this surname and came up with nothing.  However the English variant had many records.  My sense is that this family had no Freedman Bank account because they were already free.

Ancestry has some New Orleans slave ship manifests.

Here is the SLAVE VOYAGES (TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE SHIP DATABASE)  it lists ship names and captains.

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall (who is of Russian and Polish Jewish ancestry and a historian) is highly respected for what became a life's work and great contribution to slave research.  This is a link  about her work:

THE LOUISIANA SLAVE DATABASE AND THE LOUISIANA FREE DATABASE: NPS GOV GUIDE   (I believe this is a compact disk for purchase.)

A couple years ago another database became available from the Archdiocese of New Orleans.   ARCHIVES LOUISIANA - CATHOLIC CHURCH -BAPTISMALS SLAVE AND FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR   It begins with a note about how it was written in Spanish and to convert French names into their Spanish equivalents - or at least be sensitive that this may have happened.  Try for her daughter first since you know her birth year from the census.

GOOD LUCK!  Check in with me after you've done all this!

NATURALIZATION RECORDS SNAGFOOS!

Wouldn't it be nice if your immigrant ancestor came to America, got off a boat, went to the place they knew they could live and find work, and then stayed there - at least long enough to be naturalized as a citizen?

I know from experience that this is not to be counted on. In fact, you may be shocked at how many years it took for your ancestors to go ahead and become an American.

If you have no idea when they became naturalized... look at CENSUS evidence first. What? Every ten years a different year for NA (Naturalization) is written down? How could that be?

Common enough!

If the information you gleen from census is consistant, then it is probably correct and the YEAR of Naturalization is yours for the simple research. If however, it is not consistant, what could be the problem?

OK... sometimes ancestors were just as suspicious of census takers as some immigrants are NOW! ...and they lied. Sometimes they confused the filing of DECLARATION OF INTENT papers, with actually going through with Citizenship, and sometimes they were naturalized with a parent or husband... This was true almost all the time unless the WOMAN WAS WIDOWED before her husband could do it for himself, her, and the children. Women got the vote and THEN began to apply for themselves as a matter of course.

More often than not, recent immigrants - searching for good employment - simply did NOT STAY PUT in one place upon immigration. What this means is that they declared in one town and then went through the rest of the process elsewhere.

These are just some of the many possibilities.

Christine

I TOOK THE TEST TO BE A U.S. CENSUS TAKER

I took the test to be a U.S. Census taker! I wanted to see if I would pass - and I did with a near perfect score. Now, as I was taking this test, I couldn't help but think how VALUABLE the INFORMATION I might collect will be for FUTURE GENEALOGISTS!

There is a LOT to learn from past census, including historical ATTITUDES about people!

I don't know if I'll get to do my neighborhood or not.

Here is what has been explained to me. THE UNITED STATES IS GOING TO DO THE MOST MASSIVE MAILING IN HISTORY, hoping that the vast majority of us will reply - and honestly!

THEN, those who HAVE NOT MAILED IN THEIR INFORMATION will be approached the old fashioned way when a census taker comes to the house and asks the head of household about the family!

Just to make this more difficult in Los Angeles, which is considered to be the MOST DIFFICULT area to census take, those who walk the neighborhoods will have to deal with more than pit bulls and raving but adorable chihuahuas! They will mostly likely encounter people who do not speak English - in a place where voters information comes in Japanese, Chinese, Viet Names, and Thai - but ILLEGAL ALIENS...

Should they be afraid?

We know that immigrants to the United States in the 1910 and 1920 census were not especially afraid but things have changed since that immigration.

Christine

READING THE CENSUS and CALCULATING FOR INFLATION

Ever wonder if your ancestor was rich or poor? Ever compare siblings in different states and notice that one owns a home worth $10,00o in one state, while another is renting for $50 a month? Just how rich is rich and how poor is poor? Real estate has always varied a lot by location.

I found a calculator on line that I like called The Dollar Times Inflation Calculator. I learned that ONE DOLLAR in 1930 is equal to $12.22 today. That means that one of my relations house in Jersey would cost $165,000 today. Now is that $165,ooo in Los Angeles (good luck finding that shack!) or a great middle class home in, well, Jersey!

Try this calculator and see what you think! Click on the title above or on the link to the right!