Tracing your
family tree is a rewarding project.
However, if you are tracing African American ancestors it can be very challenging. Prior to the Emancipation Proclamation, most
enslaved people had no civil or probate records. Since it was illegal to
educate slaves, most enslaved people could not write to produce letters and
other personal literary items that might reveal their names, if they had children and other
personal history. Though it is difficult to trace African American ancestors, do
not let this deter you from finding your family.
Getting Started
Start your
family tree with yourself, add your parents and work the way up your family
tree. Collecting data online is good for finding vital information such as
birth and death dates, but those old family stories are excellent sources of
information. Ask your elders if they know
of any family stories, and if so, record them. These stories may provide information
and clues that will help you trace your linage further back in time. Use open ended questions to broaden and deepen the conversation. Get as much oral
history from your family members as possible.
If not mentioned, ask for names, locations, dates, professions, or
anything that will provide clues to your family members’ lives.
The census
of 1870 is the first census that included the names of enslaved people. For many African American ancestors this is where they are first documented. The 1850 and 1860 Slave Schedules may be of
some use, but you would need to know the name of the slave owner and even at
that you may not be able to verify who were your ancestors because no names
were provided. Slaves were also enumerated on federal census records from 1790
to 1840 with the families they served, but like the slave schedules, no names
were recorded.
Search Free Databases!
The "Freedmen’s Bureau," or the Bureau of Refugees, Freedman, and Abandoned Lands was
established in 1865 to help newly freed slaves find relatives that they were
separated from. The Freedmen’s Bureau
only existed from 1865 to 1872, but their records are still maintained and are
a very good resource for tracing African American ancestry. From their website,
you can look up death certificates, marriage records, birth records, documented
slave owners, migration information, plantation records such as location and
conditions, and African American military service documents. The website is
easy to use; you just need to search by name.
The Bureau has additional website links to help you with your search
through related websites.
This website
is a database of all of Confederate and Union armies for the Civil War. The website is run by the National Park Service. This growing
database includes the Colored Troops who fought in the Civil War. Categories that can be searched are for soldiers,
sailors, regiments, battles, prisoners, medals of honor, cemeteries, and
monuments.
Information
after the Civil War is a lot easier to find than information prior to it. Oral histories are a tradition that humans
have long used and still do. We tell our children and
our grandchildren about our lives and the people in it. Voices from the Days of Slavery was created
by the Library of Congress to help preserve these oral histories from former slaves.
Lowcountry Africana
is a fantastic resource for anyone who had ancestors in the “historic
rice-growing areas of South Carolina, Georgia and extreme northeastern Florida.”
The site provides information on slave-owners that in most cases includes the names of the slaves
they owned. The site also has photos, tips and special projects.
The only way to explain this is to take a quote from the website “Two
books you can read on-line containing about 2,000 pages of family histories based
on all colonial court order and minute books on microfilm at the state archives
of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Delaware (over 1000 volumes),
1790-1810 census records, tax lists, wills, deeds, free Negro registers,
marriage bonds, parish registers, Revolutionary War pension files, etc. There
are also another 5,000 pages of abstracted colonial tax lists, Virginia
personal property tax lists, census records, etc., under "Colonial Tax
Lists..."
The University of Virginia has an amazing anthology of interviews with former
slaves in both written and audio form. During the interviews former slaves
discussed their lives before and after emancipation. In many cases, photos of
the people interviewed are included. The site also has a collection of lists, photos
and registers of African Americans that were free prior to the Emancipation
Proclamation.
Though not
all the USF project databases seem to be searchable, many are. The site has links to a variety of resources, a
mailing list, story share, and someone who you can e-mail with questions.
If
you need the help of professional genealogist to assist you with your African
American research contact Ancestry Connections Genealogy
