Free Resources for African-American Research

In honor of Black History Month, I thought I'd share some free resources for researching African-American ancestors.

Chronology on the History of Slavery and Racism

An excellent timeline, complete with references, has been published online by Eddie Becker of Holt House as the Chronology on the History of Slavery and Racism. It is broken up into three sections: 1619 to 1789, 1790 to 1829 and 1830 to the end (which appears to be the 1990s).

This is one of the best timelines I've come across by far. It covers laws regarding slavery, historical background, the spread of slavery, the civil rights movement, literature and more.

The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. A collection by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and University of Virginia documents the lives of slaves through images. The collection is broken down into 18 sections including maps, plantation life, military activities and portraits, just to name a few. Sources and comments are given for each image.

Lowcountry Africana

Lowcountry Africana is dedicated to documenting the people and culture of South Carolina, Georgia and northwest Florida. The site is an amazing resource for individuals doing genealogy research of African American ancestors from the area. It offers a research library, helpful information on researching, resources by state and a records search function.

If you would like to aid others researching African American genealogy, sign up for the Restore the Ancestors Project. Through a partnership between Lowcountry Africana, Fold3, the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, and FamilySearch, researchers can search and view the South Carolina Estate Inventories and Bills of Sale for free at Fold3. Not all of the records have been indexed yet so volunteers are needed to help make more of the records searchable. Have you done your ten yet?

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Free Access to Historical Documents from the American South

While browsing at the local library, I came across a book that listed a large number of local and family histories that are available for viewing free online. The book, The Genealogist's Virtual Library: Full-Text Books Books on the World Wide Web, was an amazing find, especially since it wasn't anywhere near the history or genealogy section in the library.

One of the sites listed in the book was Documenting the American South, available through the University of North Carolina website. DocSouth in short, it is a gathering of fifteen collections. Part of the collections are specific to the state of North Carolina, while others cover the South as a whole. Collections include:

• The Church in the Southern Black Community
• The Colonial and State Records of North Carolina
• The First Century of the First State University
• First Person Narratives of the American South
• Going to the Show
• The James Lawrence Dusenbery Journal (1841-1842)
• Library of Southern Literature
• North American Slave Narratives
• The North Carolina Experience
• North Carolina Maps
• North Carolinians and the Great War
• Oral Histories of the American South
• The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865
• Thomas E. Watson Papers
• True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina

Visitors to DocSouth can browse by collection, author, title, subject or geographic location. You can also search using the box at the upper right of the screen. In addition to books, the collections hold letters, diaries, government papers, posters, pamphlets and more. Even if you don't find anything specific to your family, it's really worth taking a look to get a better sense of the culture and history of the South.

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Free Genealogy Resource for African American Research

Researching African Americans is notoriously difficult, especially when researching ancestors that were enslaved. Families were often broken up and scattered to the wind with little regard to how the family members felt. Records, when they exist, are generally sparse, offering little information other than the individual's name, age and position.

AfriGeneas is one free genealogy resource that can help with your research. The site offers tips on finding African American ancestors, forums and chat to talk to others, state and world resources, photos, and several databases.

The databases include census records, library records, death records, marriage records, slave data and surnames. Material found in the databases has been submitted by site visitors. If you have information not found in the databases, feel free to contribute. The more information available about our enslaved ancestors, the better chance we have in researching them.

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Native American Heritage Month

November is Native American Heritage Month. In honor of that, today's free genealogy resources focus on tracing your Native American ancestry. Throughout the month, I will be posting with more resources so keep an eye out.

Access Genealogy has a number of Native American genealogy resources. These include information on the various tribes, rolls, census schedules, and cemetery records, just to name a few. Also included in this freebie are articles on proving your Native American ancestry. One feature I noted that I haven't saw a lot of on other sites is information on Canadian tribes.


If you're not familiar with RootsWeb, it is the free side of Ancestry.com. One of the things I love about it is the user-submitted databases. They often have information not found elsewhere and best of all, it's totally free. When tracing your Indian roots, you will definitely want to check out the Native American Data. The surname is required and you can narrow your search further by adding a first name, tribe or record type. When the results of your search come up, be sure to click on the more info hyperlink. It gives a lot more detail, including others with the same family.

Finding information and some digitized documents are available on the National Archives Native American Records page. Just scroll down the list to find the records you think you are likely to find your ancestor in. Then click on the hyperlink which takes you to information on finding the records in the Archival Research Catalog. Information you can expect to find is the Final Rolls, Indian scout pension files, selected documents from various Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) offices, photographs and more.

You don't hear a lot about African-Native American genealogy. While it is known that some Africans lived with the Native Americans, not many people realize that some lived as slaves or intermarried with the tribes. The African-Native American Genealogy website has a number of free genealogy resources for tracing these individuals.

Do you have Native American roots? Does family lore have it that there is Indian blood in your ancestry?

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Resource for Slavery in Virginia

The Geography of Slavery is a digital collection of slavery information provided by the University of Virginia. The highlight of the collection is the advertisements for slaves and servants who either ran away or were captured in Virginia. In addition to the advertisements, it also includes documents such as court records, newspaper articles relating to slavery, slaveholder records and literature and narratives.

Some of the site appears to be under construction still, in particular the explanatory essays and personal profiles sections. The resources section of the site, however, does yield some nice finds. It includes a bibliography, articles explaining 18th century currency and terminology, lesson plans for teachers and links to other sites of interest.

You can browse the advertisements or if you are looking for a specific person, you can also do a full text search. You will find little information on slaveholders other than their location. On slaves, however, you may find quite a bit of information depending on the advertisement. Some include information on former and current slaveholder, description, who they are traveling with, name, assumed names and occupation. For women, it even notes if they are pregnant.

If your ancestor was a sheriff in Virginia, you may also find their name in the advertisements. Slaves were sometimes picked up and jailed until their slaveholder was located. The sheriff would place an advertisement in the hopes that the person would see it and take possession of their slave.

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