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Making America: Records of Enslaved Laborers Within and Beyond the Plantation
Millions of enslaved people lived on plantations, private homes, and universities before emancipation.
Enslavers often created financial and personal records to track, count, and inventory enslaved families and individuals. At the same time, enslaved families and individuals privately gathered and passed down genealogical knowledge to descendants.
Examples of records:
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Antebellum censuses (1850 and 1860 US federal censuses, 1867 Maryland slave statistics, other state and local censuses, etc.)
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Plantation records (presidential properties— Monticello, Mount Vernon, Montpelier, private estate papers, Bible records, etc.)
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College and university records (Georgetown University, The College of William & Mary, University of Virginia, etc.)
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Probate records and land deeds
Databases
Check this space for future updates!
Completed Databases
- GU272 Descendants, 1785-2000
- Hampden County, MA: Black Families in Hampden County, 1650-1865
- Massachusetts: People of Color in the State Census, 1855-1865
- United States 1830 Census: Free Negro Heads of Families
- United States 1850 Census (Slave Schedule)
Upcoming Databases
- Account Book of John Hull, 1667-1687
- BIPOC from the New Bedford, MA Overseers of the Poor Records (in partnership with the New Bedford Free Public Library)
- Cambridge, MA: Black and Indigenous People of Color, 1630-1870
- Enslaved Laborers at the White House and Capitol
- Enslaved Persons named in Missouri Deeds
- Enslaved Persons named in North Carolina Deeds
Resources
GU272 Memory Project
Our project traces 8,000 of the descendants of the GU272, the more than 314 men, women, and children sold by Maryland’s Jesuit priests in 1838. Use this site to search for an ancestor and to hear the stories of the descendants, and access their family trees.
Lowcountry Digital Library
Supporting research about the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and historically interconnected sites in the Atlantic World.
Slave Manifests, Georgia State Archives
Slave Lists: Newton Plantation, Barbados, South Carolina
Four Families of St. Mary’s County by David Watson Kruger
Finding Oprah's Roots: Finding Your Own by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Article: How Do I Decode Slave Records? by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Census Research
Webinar: The Federal Census: Moving Beyond the Population Schedule
Census Substitutes & State Census Records, Volume 1 – Eastern States by William Dollarhide
Census Substitutes & State Census Records, Volume 2 – Western States by William Dollarhide
The census book: facts, schedules, & worksheets for the U.S. federal censuses by William Dollarhide