THE LAST SEEN PROJECT - FINDING FAMILY : INFORMATION WANTED ORG ; A COLLECTION OF ADS BY FORMER SLAVES TO RECONNECT WITH LOVED ONES

You can get involved.

INFORMATION WANTED ORG

Excerpt: Last Seen is recovering stories of families separated in the domestic slave trade. Formerly enslaved people placed these ads hoping to reconnect with family and loved ones for decades following emancipation. The ads serve as testaments to their enduring hope and determination to regain what was taken from them. As of today, we have recovered 5020 ads.

Formerly enslaved people placed ads looking for loved ones from all over the United States and sometimes from as far away as Africa. Explore the map to see the locations of those placing ads or locations where ads appeared.

My search used the word 'Washington' and brought up ads that included an offer of $5 for information to find a wife. You can go to to the State and search newspapers from there too.

The Last Seen Project is committed to supporting the genealogical work of descendants of enslaved people. Transcribing the ads helps people today find their ancestors. You may also wish to contact us and tell us about your ancestors. Please let us know when you find an ancestor in the ads.  

(Yes there are some genealogy success stories!)

C 2026 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

LAST SEEN by JUDITH GIESBERG : ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY BOOK RECOMMENDATION : BLACK HISTORY - LOVE STORIES

This book is about love stories: the love of family, of partners, siblings, and children who were once enslaved, of friends and those who served in the military together seeking each other to reconnect. These people were sold away or escaped to freedom. They were gone and those who loved them wanted to know the truth. Were they alive or dead? Where were they? What had happened to them since they last saw each other?  (Had they married?  Had more children?) Could the family be reunited?

Author Judith Giesberg calls these people "The Freedom Generation."

Allow me to give you some back-story on this. As you may know, after emancipation from slavery, former enslaved people were allowed to have bank accounts and own land and property (though they were often segregated when it came to where, per localities), and also allowed to legally marry (though there were rituals of commitment and sometimes services to unite slaves, (per the slave owners values and discretion). However, in those times communications traveled slowly, very slowly compared to these days when even "snail mail" has been replaced by electronic bill paying and e-mail and unlimited long distance cell phone use. Because some slaves were sold and resold or moved along, they were often out of communication entirely. The Underground Railroad moved people to freedom. The Civil War also scattered people, including those who had been part of the military or escaped to the Union while soldiering. Upon emancipation, some had no means to move from the place they had been enslaved while others took any means possible to move elsewhere. The years passed.

You may also know about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Great Depression, and his New Deal which resulted in federal funds being used for projects such as the Federal Writer's Project. One of the projects that writers participated in was interviewing former slaves. These writings appear in databases as "SLAVE NARRATIVES." (At my local library this database is available and searchable.) Author Giesberg search through those testimonials as well as doing research in archives for now historical newspaper advertisements and such and brought forth some stories that might break your heart too.

Some people searched for decades, not only placing ads in newspapers but traveling and networking, asking ministers and local politicians who might be inclined to help them search. Some were successful, others not. (Through genealogy that search continues.)

In the Introduction of this book, Giesberg writes, "Tens of thousands of children were taken from their mothers and fathers over the four decades of the Second Middle Passage" and "Chance meetings of formerly enslaved people were rare."

Excerpt page 65 -

"Among the one million people sold from the Upper to the Lower South before 1860, thousands were children sold alone.  According to historian Edward Baptist, between 1815 and 1820, 2,646 children under the age of thirteen were sold in New Orleans out of a total of 12,370 sales.  Of their number 1,001 were sold alone."

Giesberg writes about the emotional and psychological effects that being sold away or sent away had on children and families as an aspect of her explorations of slavery in this book. Today, we find child trafficking and child labor to be abhorrent. I will say that that children who were not enslaved were also trafficked and many went to work both in Europe and the America's very young, especially before public education. That was tied in with shorter lifespans and the fact that the age of thirteen was generally thought to be the onset of adulthood; some say being a "teenager" is also a recent experience and back in the day you were either a child or an adult. It was also an aspect of a rural or agricultural society in which large families put everyone to work in some capacity, of informal apprenticeships, and very little time to play. So we're all evolving and rejecting notions that were acceptable in the past.

This is one more book I highly recommend for its extensive researched historical content and value to anyone who wants to be inspired.

C 2026 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

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.

C 2026 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.

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

USING PENNSYLVANIA AS AN EXAMPLE : WHAT IS AVAILABLE AS CENSUS SUBSTITUTES? : STATE CENSUS ADVENTURE" #4

As we learned from the previous post on CALIFORNIA, what may be available when a state census is not available or the "state" was not a state when your ancestors lived there, could be birth/baptismal, marriage, or burial records. And from the previous post that lists the STATE CENSUS we read PENNSYLVANIA - No state census records are known to exist.

IS IT TRUE?

Historical research :  Dutch there 1641. Founded 1667 as a colony of England - British took control. 1681 Colony of William Penn; King Charles gave it to him as Province of Pennsylvania. 1776 Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. December 1787 Pennsylvania ratified the United States Constitution and becomes the second state to join the United States.  FEDERAL CENSUS TAKEN WAS FROM 1790 and every ten years... but you will encounter the 1890 being lost. Note that the majority of the population was near the eastern seaboard - Philadelphia for some time. Also note that if you look at the maps of early Pennsylvania you'll see that the present map with the straight western line is not what Pennsylvania looked like at the time. There is no West Virginia and much of what is Western Pennsylvania today was Virginia. 

OK - so now what we are going to do is find out what, if anything, there is available. 

PENNSYLVANIA STATE ARCHIVES

Excerpt: There were some non-federal censuses, such as a colonial census in 1671 and taxpayer enumerations known as the Septennial Census Returns from 1779 to 1863, which are also held by the Pennsylvania State Archives.

Excerpt:  

Record Group 7: Records of the General Assembly

Septennial Census Returns, 1779-1863 - This series contains returns for a census conducted every seven years, enumerating taxpayers for the purpose of determining representation in the General Assembly. Only about 11% of the original records have survived and the only information provided in most of the surviving returns is the name of the taxpayer, though occasionally the occupation is also given. The style and details of enumeration varies for the different counties and in different periods of time. All counties have lists of "Taxable inhabitants" and "freemen", while others also include "inmates". Commencing in 1800, the age, name, gender and place of residence of each slave is also frequently given and occasionally the name of the slave's owner. Last names of slaves are usually not given because changes in ownership would have altered these over time. A few returns for Franklin County (1828, 1835, 1842), Columbia County (1821), Mifflin County (1821), and Philadelphia City (1863) provide the name, age and gender of deaf, dumb and blind inhabitants.

Manuscript Group 262: Special Collections Microfilm

United States Direct Tax of 1798: Tax Lists for the State of Pennsylvania - Compiled to facilitate the first federal tax based on wealth (Act of July 14, 1798), these lists and summary abstracts not only document property owners but also the number and types of buildings and slaves that they owned. The 1798 Act established nine divisions in Pennsylvania. The National Archives arranged the volumes by divisions and thereunder by district, county, township, or other subdivision.

HERE IS AN INTERESTING ARTICLE ON EARLY MAPPING OF PENNSYLVANIA

D HAYTON HAVERFORD EDU : MARKETING A COLONY WILLIAM PENN

This is going to be a SERIES of POSTS and so I'm going to designate a TAG that will (eventually) bring them ALL up!

The TAG WILL BE  "STATE CENSUS ADVENTURE"

C 2026 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.

WHERE DID HARRIET JEFFERSON GO INTO FREEDOM WHEN SHE LEFT HOME AT THE AGE OF 21?

With this excerpt, I end my focus on this wonderful book! I hope you'll get a copy to read through.

 My notes re pages 262-263  :

Harriet, the daughter of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, was to be freed from the slavery she was born into at the age of 21.Her older brother could have left earlier but he stayed till he was 24. It would seem that they were to leave together, and perhaps they continued to know each other? Any woman who was self supporting in the 19th century was living in poverty. So, despite her skill at weaving, marriage to a man who could provide would be important. Was that possible?  Jefferson let them go WITHOUT MANUMISSION PAPERS. In his farmbook he said they had 'run' but though they were fugitives, no one was looking for them either, and he didn't pursue that.

Excerpt:

"To avoid the paper trail that would connect them to him, Jefferson facilitated Beverley's and Harriet's departures without furnishing them manumission papers. In fact, for anyone who might examine his papers after his death, he wrote in his Farm Book "ran" next to their names. So by law they remained fugitive slaves until the Untied States abolished slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Although some states had already abolished slavery or put it on the path to extinction by gradual emancipation before then, the force of the Federal government had always been marshaled in support of slavery, first with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, and then its stronger successor in 1850. Not only was it a federal offense to assist fugitive slaves, the 1850 act required the free states to return runaway slaves to their masters so that even in the North they were not safe.

For forty-three yeas then, Harriet risked forcible return to Virginia and slavery if her identity was discovered and reported... And so would her children.

But Jefferson was not as uncaring as one might think.

Jefferson had his man pay her stage fair to Philadelphia and gave her fifty dollars.  Population 64,000 better than Washington City (D.C.) The city had attracted many manumitted slaves from Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, as well as from the Pennsylvania hinterlands, between 1790 and 1820. 

Basically it seems he covered his daughter's tracks.

Since Jefferson had been in Philadelphia and the Continental Congress he would have been able to arrange for her to make to Philadelphia. But perhaps she got off in Washington City rather than Philadelphia... There also her father had spent 8 years as President of the U.S... Beverly Hemings was in Washington City and went there as a white man....

She was supposedly married to a white man of good standing in Washington City.  Her brother Madison said she raised a family of children but he refused to give any surname or names of children and as late at 1863 said her identity as Harriet Hemings of Monticelllo had never been discovered...

I wonder:

With so many people doing genealogy, it is always possible that someone will discover they are descended from Harriet?

I suspect that there was some chain of communication between Jefferson and his children with Sally. 

C 2024 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy Blogspot

HARRIET HEMINGS - DAUGHTER OF SALLY - ELITE AMONG SLAVES AT MONTICELLO - AND HER ROUTE TO FREEDOM

Page 190 : This excerpt explains how it was that the Hemings came to live at Monticello with Thomas Jefferson and his wife and then remained after her death.  Harriet Hemings was the daughter of Sally Hemings, born a slave, and President Thomas Jefferson.

Harriet Hemings was born into a family that had stood at the apex of the slave community at Monticello ever since Elizabeth Hemings (Sally's mother and Harriet's grandmother) arrived in 1775.  In Virginia slave's society, whites considered it a mark of favor to position slaves in the plantation house at tasks that required skill and artistry, from woodworking to cooking.  With only two exceptions - the positions of service closest to Jefferson's family were filled by Elizabeth Hemming's extended family. Jefferson's grandson even believed that the Hemingses' privileged position incited what he called "bitter jealousy" among the other slaves....  Hemings family members were a caste apart. They experienced a stability of family life uncommon to most slaves, at Monticello or anywhere else; they were employed in positions of trust (as butlers, valets, chambermaids, and nurses) and of skill (as cooks, carpenters, and artisans) and as products of interracial relationships, they were fairer-skinned than most slaves. Harriet, who was seven-eights white (and therefore under Virginia law, legally white), was described by Jefferson's overseer Edmund Bacon as "nearly as white as anybody, and very beautiful."

Page 193 : *from my notes  (The slaves sold their own garden produce on Sunday afternoons to the Monticello family. Vegetables as well as eggs from their chickens. To feed their own families they also brewed beer, and made butter and cheese. Jefferson's farm books also mention the distribution of clothing to the slaves twice a year. The Hemings family would have received better clothing.

Page 207 : But as a very young child, Harriet would have been unaware of these nuances of status. She may have played with the Randolph girls (Martha Jefferson's children) on their occasional visits to Monticello....  It was not at all unusual in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for very young children, free and enslaved, to spend their days playing together until they began to learn their respective conditions in life.  Nor would a stranger looking at the three little girls have been able to distinguish among them.... (The Randolphs explained their olive skin and dark hair by claiming to be descended from Pocohontas- I'm not sure she had descendants!)

Notes: According to Madison Hemings, who is the chief informant about the family and connection to Jefferson, Jefferson was not in the habit of being demonstrative or showing partiality to any of the children.

Page 208 : Nor did Jefferson follow the example of many planter-fathers in his own day who lived openly with their slave consorts, or claimed the children of those unions and provided for them.  Bachelor fathers in New Orleans made a point of asserting paternity in baptismal records.  When wealthy white Floridians had large mulatto families, they freed and educated their children, and provided for them in their wills, bestowing on them homes, land, and even slaves. In Jefferson's own state, there were multiple examples of fathers who freed their children who had enslaved mothers, educated them, and willed their own acreage to their progeny at their deaths. Of the several who also r the mothers of their children, one even requested that he be buried beside her...

Page 260 : ... in 1806 the Virginia legislature mandated that hensforth all manumitted slaves must leave the Commonwealth within twelve months or be re-enslaved.  Six years earlier, Richmond and been shaken by the sophisticated organization of rebellious slaves who planned to torch the city, seize its arsenal of weapons and capture the governeror and his officials....

Page 261:  In their newspaper ads, white Virginians used at least sixteen different phrases to describe the varying skin tones of their runaway slaves, This remarkable list itself was proof that, as one historian noted, "The racial order was breaking down." 

But even the law did not stipulate a neat divide between black and white. In 1785 the state legislature changed the boundary between whiteness and mulatto from one-eight African ancestry to one-quarter, but it failed to address the ambiguous racial category of people with less than one quarter African blood.  They remained raceless, the law exempting them from the legal category of color but still unwilling to categorically denote them white....

...when the 1830 census taker knocked on Sally Heming's door, he judged her, Madison and Eston white, an indication of both their skin color and the community understanding of their free status after Jefferson's death.  Three years later, however, another official judged them mulatto.....

I've noticed that the same person can be on a census as W or Mulatto or Black from census  year to another, most notably if that person has moved from their home location and was encountering new community...

I mentioned during the first post in this series about this wonderful book that I respected that author Catherine Kerrison had tracked 58 potential Harriets in Washington city as possibly Harriet Hemings, the daughter of Slave Sally Hemings and President Thomas Jefferson, a founding father of the United States of America.  The many pages she devoted to her candidates and their elimination while not detailed in terms of a research path were still interesting and does move to two best candidates. 

This is a good place to link to MONTICELLO GETTING WORD PROJECT where people who are from from Monticello Slave roots can tell their oral histories. 

C 2024 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

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

C 2024 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy

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.

C 2024 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

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.

C 2024-2025 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot All Rights Reserved

THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS by ISABEL WILKERSON : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY BOOK REVIEW

 

This is a wonderful book, a collection of stories - mini memoirs almost - of three African-American  people from the Southern states who migrated to the Northern or Western Cities.  One leaves Mississippi for Chicago in 1937.  Another who left Florida for Harlem in 1945.  Another who left Louisiana in 1953 and traveled to San Diego and Los Angeles.  It's a story of how being in a different cultural environment made them change too. 

Other Black people were not always helpful or understanding of the new comers.

Excerpt page 287 :  In the receiving cities of the North and West, the newcomers like Ida Mae had to worry about acceptance or rejection not only from whites they encountered but from the colored people who arrived ahead of them, who could at times be the most sneeringly judgmental of all.

The northern-born colored people and the long-standing migrants, who were still trying to keep their footing in the New World, often resented the arrival of the unwashed masses pouring in from the very places some of the old-timers had left.  As often happens with immigrant groups, some of the old timers would have preferred to shut the door after they got there to protect their own uncertain standing.

The small colony of colored people already in the New World had made a place for themselves as an almost invisible minority by the time the migration began.  Many were the descendants of slaves the North had kept before Abolition or slaves who fled the south on the Underground Railroad or were among the trickle of pioneers who had migrated from the South in the decades after the Civil war.

A good portion were in the servant class - waiters, janitors, elevator operators, maids, and butlers to the wealthiest white families in the city.  But some had managed to create a solid though tenuous middle class of Pullman porters, postal workers, ministers, and businessmen who were anxious to keep the status and gains they had won.  The color line restricted them to the oldest housing in the least desirable section of town no matter what their class, but they had tried to make the best of it and had created a world within a world for themselves.

***

Some of these people, even in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles experienced being unwelcome and a different version of outright prejudice.

When writing our family history stories, we need to include the testimonials of relatives as those stories are told, even if what we hear or learn makes us uncomfortable.  We are here not to rewrite history but to be as accurate as we can.  Our references to documents must be titled as they are titled in the archive. When or if we come across conflicting stories, we can include them both, and let the reader know there are conflicting stories - opinions - or viewpoints that differ.  Research can add to or prove or dismiss a story, but I say that telling it as it was told to you helps us also understand that person's life, as they lived it.

 C 2024 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved

TRAVELS WITH GEORGE : GEORGE AND MARTHA WASHINGTON and THEIR SLAVES

From previous reading on this blog about Martha Washington, I can tell you that she first married a much older man who happened to also be perhaps one of the wealthiest colonials and campaigned with his father to be his wife.  When that man died, she became the wealthiest widow in the colonies.  She brought with her into her marriage to George a fortune, which as her husband he was allowed to preside over. However, it would seem that George was good about discussing things with her and that they had a good relationship. One of the things I just learned in Nathaniel Philbrick's book is that half the slaves that the Washington's owned in their marriage came with her and were first owned by her as part of her "marriage dower."  A dowry is money, land, wealth, anything that is an asset that a bride brings with her into a marriage, and a dowry was most often provided by a woman's father upon her first marriage. 

In the passage I've selected from my reading of this book, the problem of owning slaves and wanting to free them, is one that George and Martha Washington contemplate. However, the situation becomes especially person when one slave runs away and the Washington's put out ads to have her tracked and re-enslaved. You could say that historically this is not their proudest moment.

Page 113 Excerpt and Notes:  "Even though Washington had long been contemplating the emanicipation of his enslaved workers at Mount Vernon, he resolved to do everything possible to get Ona back.  (Ona was a twenty year old woman who had been Martha's personal servant.  The issue arose because Martha planned to give Ona over as a present when her "tempermental" grand-daughter Eliza as a wedding present.)  Ona was the property not of Washington but of the estate of Martha's deceased husband and was therefore known as a dower slave, meaning that technically he couldn't free her if he wanted to.  Upon Martha's death, Ona and the other dower slaves would go to Martha's grandchildren.  As Washy's and Nelly's guardian, Washington was legally bound to look after their financial interests, and he went after Ona with all the remorseless zeal that had characterized his pursuit of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown."

Notes: Ona was absconded and to do so Washington may have abused his Presidential power.  However, Ona had not been seduced by a "Frenchman" as the Washington's proposed and she said she would only come back to serve the Washington's if they agreed to free her once they were both deceased.  They refused and she was free and married.  The Washingtons attempted to get her back another time but failed.

When Washington died in December of 1799, as in his will, all his slaves were freed.  But not Martha's dower slaves.

Ona had a difficult life as her husband died less than seven years into the marriage and she had by then three children to raise alone.

Page 305 " Many white SOuhterners condemned Washington's decision to free his enslaved workers, using the transparent and spurious claim that the enslaved at Mount Vernn were ill prepared for freedom and 'succeeded very badly as freemen." IN truth, the first free Black COmmunity in Fairfax County was composed of, acording to contemporary tax reords, "George Washington's free negroes."

To learn more about author Philbrick's travels that followed George Washington's and slavery, I suggest that reading this book will fairly take you through history, especially as he goes into the Carolina's and the scene of one of the largest sale of human beings ever.  Washington was not impressed with the Carolina's which were covered in a type of pine tree that is now near extinct with pine cones as big as pineapples!

C 2023 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

To bring up past posts about Martha Washington, click on the label Martha Custis Washington.

TRAVELS WITH GEORGE : TOBIAS LEAR EVENTUALLY MARRIED INTO BOTH GEORGE and MARTHA'S FAMILY

 

One of the surprising things about genealogy research is that one never knows when some unexpected archival type documents will be found in an individual's possession or buried in some library where maybe no one ever understood the value of them...

Excerpt and Notes: Page 109 -110  (What is now Kittery Maine marks the northernmost point of Washington's tour.  He stayed in what was called "the Red cottage" built about 1740 and Washington stayed there November 2nd, 1789.  Author Philbrick and his wife called the present owner and met with him. It is on Portsmouth Harbor.  The owner Jim is related to Tobias Lear and Stephen Decatur a American naval hero during the War of 1812.  He opened a chest that belonged to his grandfather that had not been open in 80 years and there found a family and genealogy treasure.  It is a ledger kept by Tobias Lear when he served as George Washington's private secretary during his first term as President of the United States.

"The large red-leather book, filled with daily transactions, from the purchase of theater tickets to that leopard-skin saddle pad, provided a remarkably detailed window into Washington's household during his first term as President.  Drawing upon this and other Washington-related documents that had come into Lear's possession after the President's death and never before seen the light of day, Decatur compiled Private Affairs of George Washington: From the Records and Accounts of Tobias Lear, Esquire, His Secretary.

Excerpt page 111 (How this became part of Jim's family's possessions.)

By the time the President had died, Lear was married into the family.   His first wife died of the Yellow Fever epidemic in 1793, and he first remarried Frances "Fanny" Bassett Washington.  After he was widowed again, because she died within the year of TB, he married Frances Dandridge Henley, who was niece of Martha's.  Therefore he had married into BOTH George Washington's family and hi wife Martha's.

C 2023 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

TRAVELS WITH GEORGE : PRESIDENT WASHINGTON'S BARGE - THE GREETING IN NEW YORK : ABOUT THE STATUE OF LIBERTY

Excerpt and Notes: Page 43-34  (Washington goes by barge to New York from New Jersey and his presidential barge is  greeted by a flotilla....

"... This forty-five foot open boat featured an awing and cushions and was towed by thirteen oarsmen dressed in white.  Washington was accompanied in the barge by a group of dignitaries...  But the New Yorkers were just getting started....

(There was singing - groups of singers - greatly effecting the President.)

Suddenly the waters surrounding the barge erupted into foam.  "At this moment a number of porpoises came playing amongst us, as if they had risen up to know what was the cause of all this joy." But the most impressive sight was still to come as the barge continued its advance toward the New York City waterfront.  "We now discovered the shores crowded with thousands of people.  Men, women, children.  Nay I may venture to say tens of thousands; from the fort to the place of landing although near a half a mile, you could see little else along the shores in the streets and on board every vessel but heads standing as thick as ears of corn before the harvest."  (quoting Boudinot)

(Still, this display just made Washington more anxious about his new role and how he might please the people.)

Excerpt: (Author Nathaniel Philbrick and his wife go to Battery Park - where the Statue of Liberty is.)

... "And yet we did see quite enough: The Statue of Liberty looming above the water, her oxidized copper skin darkened with verdigris  I had always thought the statue depicted the goddess of liberty standing proudly with her gilded torch held high --a welcoming beacon of hope for the millions of immigrants bound for nearby Ellis Island throughout much of the twentieth century.  But once our boat, appropriately named Liberty, had taken us to the landing spot on the south side of the island. I could see that, no, the goddess was not standing still;she was striding forward, the broken shackles of a chain at her feet.

The Statue of Liberty, I soon learned, had been inspired by the abolition of slavery during the Civil War.  A gift from France, it had been left to the Americans to raise the money for the statue's 150 fott-high- pedestal.  Fund raising had lagged until the newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer appealed to the readers of the New York World and raised a significant portion of the required fields.  The Statue of Liberty was finally dedicated in 1886."

C 2023 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

TRAVELS WITH GEORGE : NEW JERSEY WAS DIFFERENT : THE RIGHT OF WOMEN and AFRICAN AMERICANS TO VOTE : SUFFERAGE

 Excerpt: Page 32 

"In terms of suffrage and political access, New Jersey was different than from any other state in the Union. Since 1776, the state's constitution had given voting rights to any adult - male, female, white, or African-American - who had lived in New Jersey for a year and was worth at least fifty pounds. (This would remain the case until 1807, when the Anti-Federalist state legislature restricted the right to vote to white males in an effort to prevent women, who tended to vote Federalist, from participating in the 1808 presidential election, ultimately won by the Anti-Federalist Thomas Jefferson's heir-apparent, James Madison.) Whether or not New Jersey's liberal  voting laws in 1789 had anything to do with it, the women of Trenton took the leading role in celebrating Washington's return. Under their direction, a twenty-foot arch supporting thirteen pillars was constructed over the bridge across the Assunpink. Just as had been done in Philadelphia, the arch was entwined with branches of evergreen, laurel, and flowers.  Emblazoned across the arch's top in large gold letters was the phrase, "The Defender of Mothers Will Be the Protector of the Daughters. Above the inscription was a cupola of flowers encircling the dates of Washington's twin victories.  December 26, 1776, and January 3, 1777, topped by a large sunflower.

When given the choice, Washington seems to have preferred the company of women over men.  He loved to dance, and after a dinner party he could be found in conversation with Martha and her lady friends rather than his male peers.  He particularly enjoyed speaking with sharp-witted, articulate women..."

C 2023 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

TRAVELS WITH GEORGE : ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY BOOK REVIEW

Nathaniel Philbrick*** is adept at writing about the early inhabitants of the colonies and key figures in the foundation of the United States. This book is about George Washington, who took office in 1789 and was our first President after a successful Revolutionary War campaign. It's about his family, his wife Martha, and slavery, as well as other aspects of the man's personality and character. 

What Philbrick did was travel the route that Washington himself did: New England to South Carolina and a small area of Georgia. He went to some of the places where Washington's presence was well known enough to enjoy tours and reenactments today. He talked to people.  As he says on page 6, "But this wasn't going to be the same kind of carefree ramble enjoyed by Harry and Bess (Truman)  in the 1950's. We were, after all, following the travels of a slaveholder at a time when Confederate monuments were being removed across the South.  The country's political divide seemed to be widening by the day.  And yet I didn't want this trip to be about what separates us.  I wanted to find out how Washington attempted to bind us together into a lasting union of states.  Acknowledging and even delving into his weaknesses and failings, especially when it came to slavery, I wanted to know what Washington got right - what tools he and his generation had left us to begin to build a better nation.

Oh, and a little independent research on my part; our first three presidents, Washington, Jefferson, and Madison all spoke with English accents. They didn't just speak with that accent, they had that accent because they were British, and their thoughts had to be influenced by a certain mentality of that ethnic heritage, that political system - the King - even as they wanted different for a new nation.

(I try to think of my own ancestors who were in Europe in 1800.  I often wonder what they heard of the American Revolution and what they thought of it.)

There are a few passages in this book that I thought were especially telling or valuable which I will be excerpting. In particular the way Washington dealt with his slaves and those who were brought into the marriage by his wife Martha, called "dower slaves," was especially telling. Laws of inheritance at the time prevented him from decisions on Martha's.

As I have been, rather than do one extremely long session of excerpts, I will play it forward and readers who are interested in more can bring up all posts by clicking on the label or using the search feature...  Try the words George Washington.  This book is a recommended read for those of you who like to learn more about American History, especially as it might pertain to your own genealogy research.

Oh, and as a P.S.  The author and his wife took their dog with them on their travels.  Washington loved his dogs.  Page 23:  "Not only had he almost single-handedly developed what we call today the American fox-hound, but he had a great affection for his dogs, giving them names like Sweet Lips, Drunkard, and True Love.

C 2023  Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

*** In the past I reviewed his book about the Mayflower.

 

ANCESTRY GENEALOGY DATABASE - U.S. SLAVE ERA INSURANCE POLICIES 1640-1865

I check the Ancestry card catalogue to see what is new and also use it to search for databases I don't know about. I never thought that slave owners would take out insurance on their slaves. and as early as 1640!  Since using the ProQuest History Vault brought up Delaware, I thought I'd try this one for the city of Pittsburgh.  While Pittsburgh did not come up there were lists of slaves including some surnames, the place of residence, and the slave holder's name.

An example is Henry Clay a slave in Louisville Kentucky whose holder was James McDowell.

It says he was a steamboat hand and the policy on him was number 1686.

Now the links to the policy information go to the Internet, so be sure you're on a computer that will do that. Some library computers will not. This one went to the state of Illinois.

I take it that Northern insurance companies sold policies to people who held slaves in other  states even if slavery was illegal in theirs.  What an eye opener.

C 2022 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpor

USING PROQUEST HISTORY VAULT FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN GENEALOGY and HISTORY RESEARCH

SOUTHERN LIFE, SLAVERY, and the CIVIL WAR is the title of the ProQuest History Vault that I used.  I can't link to it for you, but you may find this database available at your local library. ProQuest has many databases including newspapers that can be used.

I decided to see what this database offers and thought it was pretty exciting. Records of Antebellum Southern Plantations brought up a few titles and descriptions for a PDF download.  You're thinking the South, right? Well, not necessarily. I started with the name of a city in the North.

FOLDER 008967-01209-0913 Brought up Sally Barker an infant born free in Kent Delaware in 1807 who had petitioned with the help of an adult obviously, to remain free.

FOLDER 016455-003-0458 brought up Free Black Henry Banes who seeks to emancipate his wife, Judith, who he mentions is also a midwife whose services to the community will be valuable.

FOLDER 001542-003-0612 brings up William who is actually asking to become the slave of a certain physician who he says he does not wish to removed from in Mississippi.  He says they have a good relationship. It's 1859.

You can bring up folders by putting the numbers above (but not the word FOLDER) in the search bar.  I would suggest a general search beginning with a place.  Try a state first.

There are diaries and estate records and so on in this history vault.  I like that these stand as testimonials.

C 2022 Ancestry Worship Genealogy

SALLY HEMINGS EXHIBIT AT MONTICELLO

The exhibit dedicated to Sally Hemings (also spelled Hemmings) at the home of President Thomas Jefferson, in Virginia, includes genealogy documents.  This African-American woman was a half sister to Jefferson's wife, sharing a father with her, and had lived in the Jefferson household as a slave since childhood.

Controversy around this story has brewed for years, but the story has now been accepted as truth.  She returned from Paris with him, pregnant, and in agreement that any children she had would be freed upon adulthood.

Many have tried on this story, wondering if there was love.  I tend to think so.

So see the video, the timeline, some of the documents...

MONTICELLO ORG

Descendants of slaves of Monticello also have participated in an oral history project called Getting Word https://www.monticello.org/getting-word/people/people

HIDDEN IN PLAIN VIEW : ANCESTRY WORSHIP BOOK REVIEW

 Raymond G. Dobard and Jacqueline L. Tobin -authors

I loved this book because it's about art as communication, in this case the use of quilts to signal to slaves that wanted to run for their freedom that the time was ripe. Perhaps a house slave who knew when the plantation owners would be leaving on a trip would lay a quilt out - as the cover picture shows - as a sign.  More, the DESIGN of the quilt could be memorized and actually be a map or series of directions for the escaping slaves to follow.  Very clever!

I feel this book is a must read for anyone interested in American history or African-American history.

C 2019-2025 Ancestry Worship Genealogy - BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

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.

C 2019  Ancestry Worship Genealogy BlogSpot