We have already gone through many different subjects on our tour of family history research from doing international research to some popular genealogy websites. Now let’s do a dive deep into exploring your African American family history.
First off, be prepared to be frustrated by running across no information. While it is a rewarding journey, it is not without its struggles as well. The history of being Black in America encompasses everything from enslavement to freedom to Jim Crow to the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter and much, much more. The historical record mirrors these events and documentation ebbs and flows. Also, much of this historical record will be filled with hateful, harmful, and racist language and you may uncover brutal treatment or practices brought upon your ancestors. While there is no way to properly prepare for such things, to be mindful of the possibility may help.
There is a general start date for most modern African American genealogy: 1870. The 1870 census marks the first time ALL black people are named in the federal census. Previous censuses only included the names of free blacks and those enslaved would just be a number listed under their enslaver's entry.
The first steps would be to trace your family history back to the 1870 wall using records like the census, wills, vial records, tax records, and military records. It is also key to get as much information as possible from living relatives. Review our Getting Started with Genealogy, Popular Genealogy Websites, and Tips for Researching at Archives posts for additional information on the best practices to gather that information and build your family tree back to 1870.
History
History plays such a key part to black genealogy, whether it is slave trade, slavery, emancipation, the Great Migration, the Second Great Migration, etc. All events have had a deep and lasting impact on determining where records can be found for your ancestors. Knowing the context of the period and communities they lived in offers clues to piecing together your genealogy and helps to provide a larger understanding as well.
By the time of the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, the overwhelming number of blacks in America were slaves. In 1860, of the 4.5 million blacks listed on the census, 4 million were enslaved with half a million listed as being free. To that end, it helps to know about the practices and laws that surrounded slavery and what life was like for enslaved people not just in the antebellum South but also in the North.
A good example is Pennsylvania passage of the Gradual Abolition Act in 1780 that stopped the importation of slaves into the state and established the process by which slavery was to be abolished in the state, primarily through stating that a child born of a slave shall be set free upon reaching the age of 28. However, this freed no enslaved peoples and kept large numbers of people in enslavement well after 1780. It also increased the number of enslaved peoples being sold to Southern states prior to them reaching the age of 28.
Knowing this history helps to make it easier to trace where your ancestors lived and how they lived. Each state and community might have their own laws and regulations affecting your research today.
For a good overview of slavery in America, I highly recommend Ira Berlin's Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. You might also want to check out the work of Eric Foner, who has written pretty extensively on Reconstruction in America. And I cannot recommend enough Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. All will help provide context to the history lived by your ancestors, and provide clues and information for you when doing your genealogy research.
Records
Pre-Emancipation genealogy research will often be just as much about researching and identifying the last enslaver as it is finding your ancestor, because much of the records will be found in the enslaver's name. These records will typically come in the form of wills of the enslaver (where an enslaved person is named and bequeathed to another), inventories and estate sales of the enslaver (where an enslaved person will often be named and the name of the purchaser would also be listed), and other locally recorded documents such as manumissions granting freedom to an enslaved person, sales of enslaved peoples, or even contracts drawn up by enslaved people from where they hired themselves out.
Other types of local government records include slave registers that may include names of enslaved persons, tax records that keep a total of the number of enslaved persons in a household on a yearly basis (and informs you who the slaveholders were in a community), and land deeds. These records typically can be found at local courthouses, local archives or historical societies, or a state's archives. Federal census records would offer the number of enslaved persons in a household on a decade by decade basis. Personal records such as plantation records can also be located for specific locations.
While we like to think historical records are pristine and perfect, they are most certainly not. The people recording the dates, figures, names, whatever information, were still human and prone to the same mistakes that you and I make when writing things out. So be prepared to cross-reference "facts" to gauge the accuracy of a date or a name. You will be surprised to find how often information was mis-reported, mis-recorded, or mis-transcribed.
Names
As you browse through the names you will notice that most enslaved people only had one name or were only referred to by one name. Many of the names you will find here were not given to the slaves by their family but are the informal names their enslaver imposed upon them. With their freedom from enslavement came a freedom to choose a new name. Often a former slave would change their name from the informal to something more formal like Joseph, Elizabeth, William, etc. For surnames, some took names from their trades or skills (Miller). Some took their new surnames from the color of their skin (Brown or Black). Some took their new surnames from famous Americans at the time (Washington or Franklin). While others took common surnames like Jackson, Johnson, Moore, and Morgan. It was all just one step in the process of a former slave reclaiming themselves. Still some former slaves took the last names of their ex-enslavers, which makes the name of the last enslaver really important as it can provide a direct link.
Also, spelling of names, both given and family names, was not standardized and can vary from today's common spelling of names. So when searching you may need to try multiple spellings of a name or be on the lookout for variations. An example is Febe, Phebe, Phoebe.
Outside of the United States
So far the focus has only been on the American portion of your family's history. Most African Americans in the U.S. are descendants of the 400,000 enslaved blacks who were forcibly and brutally brought over to North America prior to 1860. It can be extremely difficult to trace your ancestor back to their African homeland, but the records of sales of enslaved people, advertisements for those sales, notices of the arrival of slave traders, etc. may provide some clues to help you carry on your genealogy journey.
Similarly, there has been a large influx of people of African descent who emigrated to the United States from Caribbean nations since World War II. You would need to trace them back to their Caribbean country of origin, and continue researching them there. Though, the availability of records online may not be as prevalent as they are here in the United States.
To further help you along the way here are some good general resources:
Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society
African American Genealogy: An Online Interactive Guide for Beginners
African American Genealogy Resources from FamilySearch.org
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