Tracing African American Roots
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.
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Freedmen’s Bureau
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.
Civil War Soldiers & Sailors
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.
Voices from the Days of Slavery
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
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.
Free African Americans of Virginia, N Carolina, S Carolina, Maryland & Delaware
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..."
American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology
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.
University of South Florida Africana Heritage Project
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
