I am often surprised about how little time genealogists researching former slaves spend exploring the slave interviews. The Slave Interviews comprise over 2,000 interviews of former slaves that were made in (primarily) the 1930s. An Underutilized Source Mostly gathered by the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program, these interviews comprise one of the richest […]
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Category: Slave Research
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 […]
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 […]
How Many Slaveowners Were in the South?
This is the third in a series of posts (see previous posts here and here) where I am asking us all to consider reevaluating some of our beliefs surrounding slavery. People everywhere like to make the point that: “Only one in three southerners held slaves.” Why do people say that? It’s often a part of […]
Most Slaves Lived on Large Plantations
I’m tackling some of the biggest myths around slavery in this recent series of posts (see the first one here). Today I’m discussing what I call the paradox of slavery: “Most slaveholders only owned a few slaves.” That is a true statement. However, many people have a hard time understanding that even though this statement […]
Africans Enslaved Other Africans: NOT
“Africans enslaved other Africans” has become a common refrain these days in discussions about the African Slave Trade. People usually invoke this phrase to make an argument that Africans themselves bear responsibility for selling their own people. I also hear this a lot from the descendants of slaveholders, which of course comes across as a […]
Slaves in Pre-Marital Agreements
In our search for ancestors who were once slaves, let’s not forget that they were often named in pre-marital agreements. This is one record that is often neglected in our research. I have mentioned before the need to research the slaveholder’s wife, since we know that this was often how men gained ownership of slaves. […]
A Rare Census Find
Census records form much of the foundation of our research. I have written many posts trying to emphasize that we have to go back and read the census. Its critical we learn about the communities where our ancestors lived. We have to know the typical pitfalls of census research. We have to learn how to […]
Teaching the Hard History of Slavery
This will be another long post. Sigh. The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report last week called “Teaching Hard History: American Slavery.” The Atlantic ran an article about the report. It’s a sobering read. For me, it was deeply disturbing, though not surprising. So much of what we suffer in this country is *directly* […]
The Long, Long Hold of Slavery
After emancipation, the vast majority of the 4 million newly freed slaves remained living near their former owners, if not working directly for them. Some did leave the area of their enslavement. They left with the Union Army, migrated to nearby cities for work or left in search of loved ones who had been sold. […]