I have African American ancestry. Do you have suggestions for researching my genealogy?
Answer
First, please take a look at "Do you have resources I can use to research my family's genealogy?"
Here are some additional suggestions.
Past records of the United States Census are available through the National Archives. The 1870 census is the first in which formerly enslaved African Americans were listed by name. The 1850 and 1860 censuses included slave schedules listing numbers of enslaved persons held by particular enslavers along with their sex, color (black or mulatto), and age, but without their names.
If you are able to determine the name of a plantation, family, or person who may have held an ancestor of yours in enslavement, you can look to see if South Caroliniana Library holds antebellum papers from that person, family, or plantation, which might include names of enslaved persons. We also hold series A and B of the Records of ante-bellum Southern Plantations on microfilm. (These are available also from other libraries.) We can provide an index to these records, or you can see the lists of names in the two series, Series A and Series B, as provided by FamilySearch.org.
Records kept by the Freedmen's Bureau after the Civil War often contain labor contracts between recently-freed African Americans and land owners, who were sometimes their former enslavers. They are organized by area, so if you have an idea of where a formerly enslaved ancestor may have lived, you might be able to find a record of them from immediately after the Civil War. Freedmen's Bureau records are available several places online:
- The Freedmen's Bureau holdings at the National Archives
- The Freedmen's Bureau Records at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture
- The Freemen's Bureau Digital Collection in the Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives
- The Freedmen's Bureau Online
The South Carolina Department of Archives and History has a page of resources for African American genealogy.
And the International African American Museum in Charleston, S.C., has a Center for Family History.
Some genealogists find that they wish to employ a professional researcher to assist with their family history. Please contact us if you would like a list of researchers who have provided their contact information for us to give out.