Documenting the enslaved
It was the 14th day of April 1831, and William M. Robertson needed money.
A hatter in Lowndes County, Mississippi, he owned a hat shop in the Town of Columbus, the county seat.
And he wanted to borrow $150.40.
John Billington had the money to lend, and Tilghman Tucker would act as trustee, but Robertson needed to offer security for the loan. Something the trustee would hold legal title to and could sell if the debtor didn’t pay off the loan as scheduled on the first of October.
And so, the deed book solemnly records, this man, William M. Robertson, put up property as security for that loan.
An unspecified town lot on which the hat shop stood.
A gray horse aged about 10 years.
And a certain Negro woman, Fan, about the age of thirty-five years.1
Read that last paragraph again.
A certain Negro woman, Fan, about the age of thirty-five years.
In 1831, she was property offered as security for a loan.
In 2017, Fan is a person to whom The Legal Genealogist owes a special duty.
A duty to document her in my family genealogy every bit as much as I document my own kin.
Because William M. Robertson was my third great grandfather.
Documenting the lives of those enslaved by my ancestors to the extent that I can is part of my obligation as a genealogist.
That’s the concept behind of The Beyond Kin Project, a new venture launched in 2016 by two Alabama genealogists, Donna Cox Baker and Frazine K. Taylor.2
I wrote about this project short while ago,3 including the explanation that:
Effective genealogical research on America’s enslaved people requires access to the documents and life stories of the slaveholders who claimed ownership of them. The slaveholders’ stories, meanwhile, are incomplete without the fullest possible accounting of the enslaved persons who were integral to their comfort, wealth, and position in society. While the two groups of people in most cases were not genetically kin, they have relationships “beyond kin.” Slavery intertwined their lives and connected their family histories.4
Today I join in The Beyond Kin Project on a very personal level.
I will go on to add this post to the Slave Name Roll Project, the objective of which is “to record information about named slaves whenever and where ever they may be found so that African-American genealogists and family historians may break through the wall that is the 1870 census.”5
Because as a descendant of a slavemaster I can help the descendants of the enslaved.
Because I hope we can come together and work together and, together, document all of our families.
Beyond kin.
So that everyone’s name can be known.
Because it’s the right thing to do.
SOURCES
- Lowndes County, Mississippi, Deed Book 1:55, Robertson to Tucker, deed of trust, 14 April 1831; County Courthouse, Columbus; FHL microfilm 901930. ↩
- See “BKP Founders,” The Beyond Kin Project (http://beyondkin.gegbound.com/ : accessed 12 Mar 2017). ↩
- See Judy G. Russell, “Researching beyond kin,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 13 Mar 2017 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 31 Mar 2017). ↩
- Ibid., “Why we need the Beyond Kin Project.” ↩
- “About the Project,” Slave Name Roll Project (http://slavenamerollproject.blogspot.com/ : accessed 31 Mar 2017). ↩
Thank you for this information. I transcribe deeds, etc., at my local courthouse (Lafayette County, Mississippi) and have found many of these types of documents, including bills of sale. I’m glad to find a place where these can be posted and available to other researchers.
Actually many slaves were kin to their slaveholders by virtue of the fact that many slaveholders impregnated their female slaves and the mixed race babies that resulted were both slaves and children of the slaveholder. Happened in my family. We all need to embrace this history so we can understand it and how it rippled through American history.
1865 is usually the brick wall year. One can get past the 1870 census with the records of the departments of the Freedman’s Bureau, some 1866 state censuses, Freedman’s Bank, indentures in the county courthouse, and 1867 voter registration lists found in many states. The US Army Colored Troops records include many freedmen.
Contraband runaways show up earlier in various War Department records, several Congressional committees, American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, and the records of the American Missionary Association.
I am curious when freedmen began to pay poll tax after the War.
Freedmen actually paid poll taxes from the very start of poll taxation, long before the war.
Thank you. That item should be quite helpful in some of our research.
Happy to learn there is yet another project to document those persons who were enslaved and considered property. I have contributed to the Slave Name Roll Project. I won’t have much to contribute, because my ancestors are primarily up north. Although even some of the people living in the north owned slaves at different times.
All of us working together can bring forth these otherwise lost names and help their descendants locate them.
This article is so coincidental to me. Yesterday I had an idea and started adding slave names to my Family Tree Maker program connecting them with their owners, all ancestors of mine. I’m doing this so that when I sync to Ancestry, these names (just first) will be seen in that particular owner’s family for all to see.
I have been looking for a place to share the information I have discovered while researching a USCT regiment formed in Louisiana. Thank you for this post.
I’ve been collecting names of slaves from the minutes and membership list of a church for several years. I have kept them, not knowing exactly what to do with them. In some cases, the last name of the owner is given, in others no last name. From time to time, some dates of death are recorded as well as when they became members of the church. Is this a project that would accept that type of information?
Judy, this post touched my heart deeply. I wonder how many women, both enslaved and free, lived and died wondering if anyone would ever remember them. Wondering if their name would ever be spoken again.
I also have this same quest to remember the forgotten. My family didn’t own that many slaves, for most fought for the Union. But, there are a few who did. I have been pulling their name from wills and probate records, and even Revolutionary War pension files.
Now, I know what to do with them.
They are forgotten no more.
My goodness…I had never thought of doing anything like this. But it makes so much sense! I have a few slave-holding ancestors. But many of my wife’s ancestors were major slave-holders. It still jars my mind when I unexpectedly come across a list, or a single name, of a human being being listed among the property holdings in a will or other document. Thanks for sharing this.
Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention. I have been documenting the slave names I run across in my family search wondering where to put what I have found. Now I have a place. Thank you.