Certainly being written on paper (or papyrus) is no guarantee of survival — think of the Royal Library of Alexandria.  When I write something that I hope will have lasting value, even if I initially publish on a webpage, I ensure that it exists on paper with enogh copies to, at least, promote its chances of survival over the next few millennia.

Michael Hait has published what promises to be the first of fourteen interesting volumes of transcripts from records of claims by slave owners in Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and West Virginia.  These slavemasters claimed compensation for slaves they alleged to have owned who joined the U.S. Army during the Civil War.   War Department General Order 329, issued October 3, 1863, authorized any loyal owner in Federal-controlled states whose slave joined the military service to be compensated up to $300 “for the service or labor of said slave.”  To qualify for compensation slave owners had to apply to a special state commission and present proof of personal loyalty, proof of ownership of the claimed slave, proof that the slave had enlisted in the military, and a deed of manumission freeing the slave.

In his handsome 40-page booklet, Hait transcribes the entire “Register of Claims” documenting the 114 claims submitted in Delaware.  He includes a well-written and informative introduction that describes the history of the Delaware Slave Claims Commission, its records, and the process for submitting claims.  Hait includes two name indexes, one for “claimants” and one for “slaves.”   The latter index is more accurately an index of “claimed slaves” since it does not index every slave named in the register; for example John H. Twiford’s claim for slave Joseph Smith is annotated, “Claim postponed for want of proof of descent from Henrietta the slave mentioned in the Bill of Sale” — but Henrietta is not indexed.

There are actually at most 106 owner-slave pairings among the 114 petitions, but some of the other eight petitions hint at intriguing stories.  Two scoundrels tried to claim government compensation for men who were not slaves but were actually free apprentices (claims 27 and 103).  Three other men claimed compensation for enlistees who were “not a slave or convict servant” – the term “convict servant” is new to me, but may refer to a practice of selling free persons of color, after conviction for crime, into servitude for a term of years.  One claim was resubmitted with corrected information (claims 1 and 104), another was rejected because the claimant was not the legal owner and was disloyal (claim 102).  Reasons that the commissioners denied claims included disloyalty, lack of documentation, death of claimants–and even the stubborn refusal by at least one claimant (claim 107) to execute manumission papers as late as March 1865!

By transcribing and publishing these little-known records, Hait significantly expands our reference library of the records of American slavery and the lives of slaves on the cusp of emancipation.  Their historical and genealogical significance must be evaluated in a context much greater than the two hundred or so people named therein.  For instance, by pairing last slave owners’ names with slaves’ names, this book offers yet another set of data into our ongoing exploration of how ex-slaves selected surnames and what names they chose.  Thirty-two (30%) of these Delaware soon-to-be-ex-slaves shared a surname with their soon-to-be-ex-slave-owners; seventy-five (70%) did not.  I have argued elsewhere that patterns of surname selection varied by region, with the northern-most slave states more likely to show mismatches between surnames of ex-slaves and surnames of last-ex-slave owners than states in the Deep South, and Delaware was certainly among the most unusual of antebellum U.S. slave states.   Claim no. 75 raises the interesting problem of a slave who apparently enlisted under a different name (George H. Biddle) from the name by which his owner called him (George W. Davis) in his claim.  Cases like this remind us that as early as 1865 freedpeople were choosing new identities different from the ones by which they had been known in slavery; such examples urge us to remain open-minded to very dynamic and varied possibilities when tracing freedpeople’s histories by researching surnames.

For example, vouchers are among the court records for the estate of Thomas W. Riviere in Upson County, Georgia, probated in 1859.  The estate inventory, dated November 15, 1859, listed sixty slaves, among whom were a man, Ben, appraised at $1,000, and Lyddy and three children appraised at $1,900.   Lyddy’s children identified by name in the probate records include Ellick, Frances, Smart, Make, and Silva.  Vouchers include doctors’ bill dating back as 1853, documenting medical treatment for Ben, Lyddy (variously spelled Lydia and Lidda)  and Ellick, including two bills for attending Lyddy in childbirth:  “visiting Lidda [$]2.00 attention on Parturition [$]10.00″ billed by Doctors Drake and Flewellen on March 31, 1853; and “visiting Lydia at night [$]2.00 attention & Delivering Foetus [$]10.00″  billed by Drake & Flewellen on February 23, 1855.  I had previously tentatively identified these two births as Ellick and Frances.  Medical bills are wonderful documents for genealogists to approximate the birthdates of enslaved children.

I recently completed extracting slavery information from four volumes of recorded vouchers covering the last 15 years of Upson County slavery — there were many gems among the dross.  Vouchers are well worth the attention of researchers while they are examining probate records.

[M]any commentators have noted that Alex Haley’s work Roots (New York, 1976) was a catalyst for interest in genealogy among African Americans.  Even a cursory visit to any of the major genealogy research websites will demonstrate that African American genealogy has been mainstreamed.  All of the federal slave censuses, for example, are online.   But I am unaware of any scholarly accounts that historicize this recent African American genealogical impulse or ponder its implications.  For example, how has genealogical research affected understandings of slavery among African Americans?  What are the consequences of knowing who owned one’s ancestors, where one’s ancestors were enslaved, and who made up the slave community in which one’s ancestors lived?  Historians have understandably told us a great deal about how fellow scholars have revised the history of slavery that is presented in monographs and textbooks.  But by historicizing black genealogy we may be able to understand more fully how African Americans make sense of their own slave and non-slave heritage.

It is stimulating and inspiring, I think, to ponder how our individual researches, and how we interpret and present our results, shapes not just our own family history, but connects to the collective history — the national memory — of  the past for all of us.

Many genealogists are familiar with the HeritageQuest online products available at many libraries and institutions (and available to US Navy personnel, their families, and retirees at Navy Knowledge Online). The parent company is ProQuest, whose other products include “ProQuest – Periodicals Archive Online.” This resource is often bundled with the HeritageQuest products subscribed by many libraries, colleges, and universities. If your local library subscribes to the ProQuest family of online sources (or you can access them by other means), they are well worth browsing. Articles from paper-based publications are converted to ASCI text, with page numbers. ProQuest is readily availability at many public libraries, but the disadvantages compared to JSTOR (discussed next) include more limited content, and the articles not formatted as they were originally published (no pictures).

You can take a look at descriptions of the ProQuest products at the link below.
http://www.il.proquest.com/en-US/products/brands/pl_pq.shtml

Although HeritageQuest is good, you will be ecstatic if you have access to a college or university that subscribes to JSTOR, the “gold standard” in electronic archiving. JSTOR provides a much wider range of titles. JSTOR scans the journal articles as images to preserve their original layout and appearance, but also allows full-text searches. Unfortunately, pictures are reproduced very poorly in the scanned page images. For a list of titles in theJSTOR history and social sciences collection, see this link:

http://www.jstor.org/action/showJournals?browseType=collectionInfoPage&selectCollection=as

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Biographical

John Hebron Moore, “Simon Gray, Riverman: A Slave Who Was Almost Free,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 49, No. 3 (December 1962), pages 472-484.

This article tells the story of Simon Gray, enslaved to Andrew Donnan in Natchez, Mississippi, who was hired out to Andrew Brown to run flat boats of lumber down the Mississippi River. Gray’s work was highly unusual for a U.S. slave; he was literate, lived privately with his family, supervised white employees in his boat crew as well as other slaves, was paid a wage, negotiated sales for his employer, and owned firearms. Based on the business ledgers and correspondence of Andrew Brown & Co., the author tells of Simon Gray’s activities for the company from 1845 to 1863, and names some of the other slaves Gray supervised.

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William A. Byrne, “The Hiring of Woodson, Slave Carpenter of Savannah,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 2 (Summer 1993), pages 245-263.

Byrne tells the story of Woodson through the correspondence between his owner, William Duncan, and his hirer, Godfrey Barnsley, between 1859 and 1862.  Much information about Woodson’s work, lifestyle, and habits. Includes an unusual 1860 photograph of the Barnsley slave quarter showing houses and slaves at the time Woodson lived there.

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Mrs. Myrtie Long Candler, “Reminiscences of Life in Georgia During the 1850s and 1860s,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. 33, (March 1949), pages 37-48 (Part I); (June 1949), pages 110-123 (Part II); (September 1949), pages 218-227 (Part III); (December 1949), pages 303-313 (Part IV); Vol. 34 (March 1950), pages 10-18 (Part V).
Written in 1945, this is not an academic article, but is the reminiscences of an eighty-nine-year-old woman. Born in 1856 into a privileged slave-owning family in Newnan, Coweta County, Georgia, daughter of Major Yong James Long. Writing during WWII, Candler turns her thoughts “backward to a happier time . . . when I was a little girl in Georgia.” The family slaves are mentioned by name throughout the reminiscences, but Candler devotes Part II to particularly describing seventeen slaves with whom she most closely associated as a child (“I loved them then and love them now, and I am going to try to present them so that you will know them as I did”).  Of course, Candler only knew them as a very young white child, and remembered them through the sentimental and nostalgic lens of 80 years; nevertheless, the reader will learn many interesting things that do not appear in other kinds of sources, such as how “Black Mammy” decorated her house with fashion prints cut out from Godey’s Ladies Book magazine, and what kinds of flowers she grew in her garden.  Kinships among the slaves are described, and the fact that “the two Nancy’s were given to Ma from Grandpa Grantland [Samuel Grantland of Upson County].  The story ends at the close of the Civil War as all members of the household, black and white, begin to adapt to a new South without slavery.

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Loren Schweninger, “A Slave Family in the Ante Bellum South,” Journal of Negro History, Vol. 60, Issue 1 (January 1975), pages 29-44.

Schweninger investigates the family of Sally, enslaved to Charles S. Thomas in Albemarle County, Virginia. Based largely on the manuscript biography of James P. Thomas (written in 1911, deposited at Howard University) and antebellum correspondence of the Rapier family, the article describes the work she did, where she worked, her children, slave sales, the emancipation of a son, James P. Thomas, and Sally’s death. Liberal use of quotations from the original autobiography and letters gives the article a vivid and personal appeal. Includes a genealogical chart of Sally’s family.

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Next time, I will suggest effective ways to access the world of information in academic journals.

David

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Georgia, Ogethorpe County

David C. Barrow, Jr., “A Georgia Plantation,” Scribner’s Monthly, Vol. 21, Issue 5, (1881), pages 830-836.

Scribner’s is not an academic journal, of course, but this article is fascinating just the same. Barrow describes the transformation of labor relations on his father’s plantation, Sylls Fork Place, in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, from Emancipation down to 1881. He describes the community, names many of the residents, gives examples of labor contracts, and tells some stories about particular freedmen. The article includes two very interesting maps of Barrow plantation, one showing the location of houses in the slave quarter and “big house” in 1860,

the other showing the location of each tenant family’s house in 1881. This case study offers some researcher an excellent opportunity to compare with the 1880 census. The article and maps have been put online at more than one website, including this one:
http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/emancipation/ContViews/barrow_1.html
The maps on the websites are not scanned at high enough resolution for anyone to read the names clearly. I bought a used copy of the original magazine and scanned some high-res images that I will eventually put up at AfriGeneas.

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North Carolina, Burke County

Edward W. Phifer, “Slavery in Microcosm: Burke County, North Carolina,” The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 28, Issue 2 (May, 1962), pages 137-165.

Just as the title suggests, this article describes slavery in Burke County, NC. A wonderful highlight of the article is a list of the 100 largest slaveholders in the county in 1850, and a map of Burke County with these slaveholders’ plantations or farms located on it. There is a table of census data from 1790 to 1860, showing the evolution in size slaveholdings for 51 of the county’s the largest slaveholders.

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Slaves’ Naming Practices

John C. Inscoe, Carolina Slave Names: An Index to Acculturation,” The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 49, Issue 4 (November 1983), pages 527-554.

This article discusses personal names of American slaves, and the evolution of naming practices—who named new slaves, and what names they were given—in North and South Carolina from 1670 through 1865.  Inscoe analyzes about 11,000 names from the records of 145 Carolina slaveowners, church records, county records, a manumission society, and even three slave traders! He discusses the persistence of African names, the evolution of anglicized African names, weather names (Rainy, Stormy, Eartha, for examples), birthplace names, seaport names, and classical Roman names.  Inscoe discusses slaves’ use of famous names (Washington, Lafayette, for examples) and Biblical names (although I think he underestimates the slaves’ understanding of the significance of these names), Puritan names.  He discusses the persistence of names as family names passed down to new generations, and the occasional use of a father’s personal name as a surname.   Inscoe emphasizes how distinctive was the range of slaves’ names (experienced researchers who have compared the range of names found in slave lists to the range of names of slave owners have undoubtedly noticed the very limited number of names given to most antebellum whites).   Inscoe suggests that the adoption of new names from a range of sources stopped at Emanciption, and concludes that the wide variety of slaves’ names was a “unique . . cultural product of slavery.”  When Inscoe discusses surnames adopted after the end of the Civil war, I think he sometimes goes seriously astray in his analysis—but that is a debate for another time.

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Eighteenth-Century Georgia Slave Importation

Darold D. Wax, “‘New Negroes Are Always in Demand’: The Slave trade in Eighteenth-Century Georgia,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. 68, (Summer, 1984), pages 193-220.

A study of the beginnings of African slave importation into Georgia in the 1700s. Includes a useful table showing by year, 1784-1799, the numbers and origins of slaves imported into Georgia. The list includes Jamaica, Haiti, St. Croix, Antigua, Martinique, Puerto Rico, Grenada, St. Eustatia, Connecticut, Maryland, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Gold coast, Goree, Isle Delos, Angola, Bance Island, and Banana Island. The data reminds us that not all slaves came directly from Africa, although most did. The data in this article may be superceded by the wonderful “Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database” online at http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces , but there is probably much good discussion for researchers looking for ancestors who came to Georgia in the 18th century.

Although some are about specific people or places, any family researcher or local historian may learn some useful tips on sources, methods, and interpretations.  Footnotes in academic articles show where the author found her or his information; therefore, footnotes (or endnotes) are a great source of ideas for places to look for evidence for your own research project.

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Analyzing Family Structures
Virginia, Dinwiddie County, Rowanty Township

Jo Ann Manfra, Robert R. Dykstra, “Serial Marriage and the Origins of the Black Stepfamily: The Rowanty Evidence,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 72, Issue 1 (June 1985), pages 18-44.

This article is doubly important as a study of family structure in the generation after Emancipation, and for bringing attention to a valuable resource for researchers of Rowanty Township, Dinwiddie County, Virginia: a survey taken in 1878 of 457 black households in Rowanty. All researchers will gain from the author’s analysis of insights into break-ups of enslaved marriages, remarriages, step-children, disease and death.  This study complicates any easy reading of the 1870 or 1880 censuses.

In 1878, John J. Hamilton needed a research project to complete his Master’s degree program at University of Iowa. He was fascinated with the debate between leading whites of the day on the so-called “Southern question” over whether restoring political control over the ex-Confederate states to southern whites would work for or against the economic and social advancement of the ex-slaves. On Hamilton’s first tour of the South he interviewed hundreds of people on racial attitudes, but on his second visit, he decided to go to Virginia, “get a boarding place . . . in a single neighborhood with a view to obtaining a better insight into the real economy of Virginia neighborhood-life.” He stopped at Dinwiddie Court House, checked into a hotel, and laid out a sociological survey plan to interview the heads of household “of all the colored families in the township.” Hamilton interviewed heads of households for their:

• name
• age
• color
• state of health
• parents’ names and whether living or dead
• literacy
• religious affiliation
• political party
• smoking and drinking habits
• marriage history
• occupation
• financial wealth
• property ownership
• names of wives
• wives’ ages, color, state of health
• names of children
• childrens’ ages, if dead what they died from
• any other miscellaneous information that impressed him.

Hamilton wrote what he thought he heard—so when Richard Mumford told Hamilton his “Father was a nebo came from Africa”—we can readily guess that what Mumford had actually said was his father was “an Ibo” from Africa. Hamilton collected information for 457 Black households in Rowanty during September through December 1878. Amazingly, after completing this 238-page manuscript, Hamilton changed majors to Journalism, and never published his work.

Researchers seeking ancestors in Rowanty Township have a potential goldmine of information, but they will have to go to the original manuscript in Iowa, since this article is a statistical analysis and only quotes snippets of the original data.  The manuscript is in the John J. Hamilton Papers (Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City): http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/MSC/ToMsc100/MsC24/MsC24_hamiltonjohnj.html

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1910 Census

Samuel H. Preston, Suet Lim, S. Philip Morgan, “African-American Marriage in 1910: Beneath the Surface of Census data,” Demography, Vol. 29, Issue 1 (February 1992), pages 1-15.

Researchers already know that each census is prone to errors of various kinds. This study uses statistical analysis to suggest that marriage and widowhood categories in the 1910 census “are more fluid and more ambiguous than the categories suggest.” [quoting the synopsis:] “This paper examines the quality of information about marital status, marital duration, and marriage order among African-American women in the U.S. Census of 1910. It compares the reported prevalence of widowhood to estimates of widowhood based on the mortality of black men and on the ages of women at first marriage. It also compares the reported distributions of duration of first marriage to estimates based on mortality and age at first marriage. It concludes that census reports are subject to serious error. Widowhood is overreported, and marital turnover appears to have been faster than implied by census reports. The prevalence of ‘own children’ is used to confirm these conclusions and to suggest motivations for misrepresentation.”