The 13 volumes of the Ku-Klux Congressional Testimony (part of the Serial Set) illustrate well the continuing divide in our country. I blogged about these records in 2016. These records are an incredible source of information for all genealogists trying to understand the issues at stake during Reconstruction, issues that extend into today. Hundreds of […]
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Category: African-American Genealogy
This category applies to research especially relevant to African-American genealogy researchers.
Don’t Go Looking for Slave Records
If a beginning researcher walks into a library or archives and asks to see the slave records for a community, the archivist will likely be confused. Most of the records used to study enslaved persons aren’t called that. They are Probate Records. Land Records. Court Records. Tax Records. Even Vital Records. If they were simply […]
A Valuable Strategy for Civil War Pensio...
Cluster research works. You will find more information about your ancestors if you study the lives of those in the community where they lived. I swear by this and I’ve discussed it here over and over again. One source that illustrates this clearly is Civil War Pension Records. Don’t just check research your ancestors and […]
Slave Surnames “To Save Their Lives”
Recently I came across a poignant quote relating to slave surnames I just had to share. Slave surnames are a topic I have discussed here at Reclaiming Kin several times and one that has no easy or simple formula that applies to every situation. Because of this, I save original sources where the formerly enslaved […]
Free Blacks and Re-Enslavement
Free blacks, those freed before 1865 in the United States, lived under great suspicion and often under onerous state restrictions. Especially in the places where their numbers were relatively large (i.e., Upper South states of Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, and North Carolina), slaveholders properly viewed them as a threat to the ideology of white supremacy. A […]
Do You Know How to Use Indirect Evidence...
Much of the hype of genealogical research often surrounds the different kinds of sources. Yes, new sources are always exciting. However, I believe that it is developing and growing research skills that will take your research to higher heights. A Field With Standards That’s one reason I recommend that everyone researching their roots have the […]
Slave Mortgages
Human collateral provided much of the capital for slaveholders to purchase more land and more slaves. This, in addition to enslaved people’s free labor, created much of the 18th century wealth that US growth and development depended upon. Edward Baptist elucidates how slavery drove capitalism in his book, The Half has Never Been Told: Slavery […]
About That Mulatto…
We cannot assume that anyone marked “mulatto” in a census record had one white parent and one black parent. I have previously discussed that genealogists should know some of the instructions provided to enumerators, and that the changing definitions of race, since it is a social and not a biological construct, should tell us something. […]
Finding Sharecroppers in Deeds
As genealogists, it’s difficult to research people who were poor and marginalized. The lives of wealthier and more prominent people simply created more records. I’ve had many people say to me that they haven’t researched deed records because their ancestors did not own any land. However, in many cases, the types of agreements that sharecroppers […]
Freedmens Bureau Narrative Reports
Want to know a great way to find out about the lives of your enslaved ancestors after the end of the War? The narrative reports of the Freedmens Bureau. I have discussed the Bureau records numerous times in this blog. They are a critical resource for the tumultuous five years between 1865 and 1870. Genealogists […]