Resources
Slave Datasets Available Online
Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy 1918-1820
http://www.ibiblio.org/laslave/
Dr. Midlo Hall's extensive database on 18th and 19th century slaves in Louisiana. You can search by
name, gender, origin, plantation, and racial designation. Check boxes on sub-categories allow you to
further narrow your search.
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces
So far the most extensive database on the slave trade. The time period is from 1514 to 1866. You can
narrow searches by shortening that time period, or through searching by ship, nation, voyage dates,
voyage outcome, voyage itinerary, owners, captain and crew, characteristics of slaves, number of slaves,
or sources. Also, graphs can be created using the above components. Funded by NEH preservation and
access grant.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database includes the African Names Database, currently
being funded by an NEH preservation and access grant:
http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/resources/slaves.faces
Includes Name, Age, Height, Sex/Age, Origin, Voyage ID, Ship name, Arrival, Embarkation,
Disembarkation, and Source.
African Nova Scotians in the Age of Slavery and Abolition
http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/africanns/
It showcases more than 100 documents reflecting the early African Nova Scotian experience. The exhibit
focuses on the period between 1749 and 1834, dates which mark the founding of Halifax and the coming
into effect of legislation abolishing slavery in the British colonies, respectively. A site of the
Government of Nova Scotia. According to Gwen Hall, these materials are being databased from
Australia.
AfriGeneas – African Ancestored Genealogy
http://www.afrigeneas.com/
Hosted at Mississippi State University. See: Slave Data Collection http://www.afrigeneas.com/slavedata/ See
also AfriGeneas’ Facebook page.
Related to AfriGeneas, 1619-1869 records kept by slave owners, names of slaves in their wills.
AfriQuest
http://www.africanaheritage.com/Afriquest_Press_Release.asp
DIY genealogy comes to African-American research in this handsome home for user-submitted finds and
story sharing. In Family Tree Magazine 101 Best Websites in 2010: African-American Roots.
Ancestry.com
http://www.ancestry.com/
At Ancestry.com, we’ve been helping people discover, preserve, and share their family history for
30 years since our founding in 1983. And as an internet company, we’ve been the clear leader in
online family history ever since we launched our Ancestry.com website 17 years ago.
Digital Library on American Slavery
http://library.uncg.edu/slavery/
This new resource from the library of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro searches
information culled from thousands of slavery-related county court and legislative petitions, wills,
estate inventories and civil suits, filed in 15 states and the District of Columbia from 1775 to 1867.
More than 150,000 individuals are named in the documents, including 80,000 slaves and 8,000 free people
of color. In Family Tree Magazine 101 Best Websites in 2010: African-American Roots.
Documenting the American South
http://docsouth.unc.edu/
Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides
Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture.
Currently DocSouth includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters,
oral history interviews, and songs. Sponsored by The University Library of the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Ecclesiastical Sources and Historical Research on the African Diaspora in Brazil &
Cuba
http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/ecclesiasticalsources
Directed by Jane Landers at Vanderbilt University. Collaborators are Paul Lovejoy at York University and
Mariza de Carvalho Soares, of the Universidade Federal Fluminense (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). Received an
NEH Collaborative Research grant in 2003. Baptismal records thus became the longest, and most uniform,
serial data available for the history of Africans in the Americas. At the project's conclusion in 2005,
more than 120,000 images of rich, underutilized, and at-risk ecclesiastical sources for Africans and
persons of African descent in Brazil and Cuba had been preserved and stored at Vanderbilt University.
English slave trade 1791-1799: House of Lords survey
http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=1385&type=Data%20catalogue
From Intute: “Hosted by the History Data Service (HDS), based at the UK Data Archive University of
Essex (formerly part of the Arts and Humanities Data Service - AHDS). ... The data consists of: Ship's
name, tonnage, home port of ship, departure date, African port of arrival, date of African arrival,
slaves taken on board (total number), slave mortality, slaves relanded before African port departure,
number of slaves shipped, date of African departure, American port of arrival, date of arrival in New
World, number of slaves landed, date ship left America.
Liberia*pedia - African Americans to Liberia 1820-1905
http://www.liberianrepatriates.com/
Detailed information on 15,000+ African-American emigrants to Liberia. The database includes information
on birth year (where available), town/country of origin, state of origin (including "Indian
Territories"), denominational affiliation, family relations among emigrants, destination in
Liberia, ships on which they travelled, and year of emigration. Some pages now include genealogical
links and maps showing locations where they lived, as well as other information and images (e.g., John
Brown Russwurm).
Liverpool trade and shipping, 1744-1786
http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=2923&type=Data%20catalogue
From Intute: Hosted by the History Data Service (HDS), based at the UK Data Archive, University of
Essex (formerly part of the Arts and Humanities Data Service - AHDS)…. A machine-readable edition of the
Liverpool Plantation Registers 1744-84, and of the known voyages, masters, shipowners, and life
histories of the vessels listed therein through to 1786. Key topics covered include: Liverpool overseas
trade and shipping; transatlantic voyage patterns; slave trade; Liverpool shipowners and merchants; war
and its impact on trade and shipping.
LowCountry Africana
http://www.lowcountryafricana.com/
Welcome to Lowcountry Africana, Dedicated to Exploring, Discovering and Learning About the Hidden Lives
in the Lowcountry. Lowcountry Africana, sponsored by the Magnolia Plantation Foundation of Charleston,
South Carolina, is entirely dedicated to records that document the family and cultural heritage of
African Americans in the historic rice-growing areas of South Carolina, Georgia and extreme northeastern
Florida.
Monticello Plantation Database
http://plantationdb.monticello.org/
A database pertaining to the slaves residing in Monticello. While the site seems a bit short of
finished, it does or will contain maps, photographs, and family trees interconnected to the larger
database of people who worked under Thomas Jefferson.
Runaway slaves: rebels on the plantation, by John Hope Franklin, Loren Schweninger
http://books.google.com/books/about/Runaway_Slaves.html?id=3pZgiM6pXosC
Includes data from the following states: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and
Louisiana. The John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger database was entered in SAS and seems to
be designed for statistical studies only.
Slave compensation claims
http://www.caribbeanfamilyhistory.org/Compensations/Allocation.aspx
This database has been compiled from official British government returns of people who received
compensation following the 1833 emancipation act which freed slaves in the British colonies in the
Caribbean, Bermuda, Belize, Guyana, Mauritius and Cape Colony (South Africa). It currently contains
searchable records for individuals who were former slaves in Antigua and Barbados.
Slave Manifests Filed at New Orleans, Louisiana, 1807-1860 Forms
http://community.ancestry.com/project.ashx?pid=31204
An Ancestry World Archives Project, with data entered by volunteers from online digitized documents. Not
yet live on ancestry.com
Slave Movement During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
http://www.disc.wisc.edu/slavedata/index.html
This site provides access to the raw data and documentation which contains information on the following
slave trade topics from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: records of slave ship movement between
Africa and the Americas, slave ships of eighteenth century France, slave trade to Rio de Janeiro,
Virginia slave trade in the eighteenth century, English slave trade (House of Lords Survey), Angola
slave trade in the eighteenth century, internal slave trade to Rio de Janeiro, slave trade to Havana,
Cuba, Nantes slave trade in the eighteenth century, and slave trade to Jamaica.
The Slave Rebellion Website
http://slaverebellion.org/index.php?page=guide
A database of records of slaves in the United States, focusing on insurrections and revolts. Includes
images, records, population database, and maps.
Slave Registers of former British Colonial Dependencies, 1812-1834 http://search.ancestry.co.uk/iexec/Default.aspx?htx=List&dbid=1129&offerid=0:78
Part of the United Kingdom site of Ancestry.com. The database may be searched by region. Entries
include name of slave, owner, gender, and nationality. Records are taken from the Office of Registry of
Colonial Slaves and Slave Compensation Commission. Has free index to users who register.
Slave Trade Movement between Africa and the Americas, 1817-1843
http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=1384&type=Data%20catalogue
From Intute: Dataset hosted by the History Data Service (HDS), based at the UK Data Archive University
of Essex (formerly part of the Arts and Humanities Data Service - AHDS). The data is available to order
from the HDS as a tab delimited text file or a Microsoft Excel 2000 file. From this Web page you may
download a PDF of images of the study documentation. To make use of this dataset you must first register
with the HDS… The data consists of: Ship's port of arrival, date of arrival, type of vessel, tonnage,
master's name, number of guns, number of crew, national flag, number of slaves, port of departure,
number of days of voyage, mortality.”
Slavery era insurance registry
http://www.insurance.ca.gov/0100-consumers/0300-public-programs/0200-slavery-era-insur/
Compiled as a result of a law adopted by the California legislature. Includes Name of Slave County (or
Parish), State Other Identifying Information Slaveholder County (or Parish), State, and name of
Insurance Company from which the record came. It includes names of over 600 slaves and 400 slave owners.
PDFs of original documents are available at several libraries in California.
South Carolina Historical Society (scanned records – not yet a database)
http://www.southcarolinahistoricalsociety.org/
Texas Slavery Project
http://www.texasslaveryproject.org/
Database on the spread of slaveholders in Texas from 1836 to 1845. Information can be searched by
county, population of slaveholders, population of slaves and number of slaves owned by slaveholders.
Additional maps and graphs of the period to highlight activity over time.
USF Africana Heritage Project
http://www.africanaheritage.com/
A powerful search engine at this University of South Florida Africana Studies Department website makes
it simple to search Bible records, WPA slave narratives, plantation journals, wills and probates, church
records and other records of “slaves, freedpersons and their descendants.” You’ll also
find a virtual library and reading room with historical
and how-to articles. Our research mission is to rediscover records that document the names and lives of
slaves, freepersons and their descendants, and share those records on our free Internet site.
Virginia Runaways
http://people.uvawise.edu/runaways/about.html
A digital database of runaway and captured slave and servant advertisements from 18th-century Virginia
newspapers. Offers full transcripts and images of all runaway and captured ads for slaves, servants, and
deserters placed in Virginia newspapers from 1736 to 1790. In addition to the database itself, a
searchable compilation of the ads that can be browsed
or searched,
this web site contains other material (including primary documents) intended to help the user understand
the context of slavery and servitude in eighteenth-century Virginia.
Online Project with Digital Content about Slaves and Slavery
This list is very incomplete.
The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual
Record
http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/index.php
A database of images of slave life in the Americas. The images were scanned and sent from various
academic and government organizations. The website acknowledges its limitations, stating "that
little effort is made to interpret the images and establish the historical authenticity or accuracy of
what they display." The pictures are displayed with their source and a short comment about the
piece.
Burial Database Project of Enslaved African Americans
http://www.vanishinghistory.org/
The mission of the Burial Database Project of Enslaved African Americans is to
identify, document and memorialize burial sites of the enslaved, most of which are abandoned or
undocumented.
Captive Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Making of the Americas
http://www.mariner.org/sites/micro/captivepassage/index.html
An online exhibit of the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, VA funded by NEH. This
exhibition examines the transatlantic slave trade and seeks to increase understanding of this maritime
epic and its legacies in the modern world.
Caribbean views: the full collection
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/carviews/
The website "Caribbean Views: the full collection," which is part of the Online Gallery made
available by the British Library, presents digitized images of sources relating to the history of the
British West Indies in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The sources have been gathered from the
British Library's collections, which are rich in material covering the English slave trade in
particular. The image collection includes: views and illustrations; maps; manuscript accounts; and many
printed texts. These present a variety of perspectives on life in the Caribbean, including those of
British plantation-owners and abolitionists, in addition to the experiences of slaves themselves.
Civil War Washington
http://civilwardc.org/
Database identifies people, places, organizations, documents, events, and relationships among them.
Interactive maps presenting location-based data in both geographic and temporal dimensions.
Photographs, lithographs, drawings, and other visual representations.
Harriet Tubman Institute, York University
http://tubman.info.yorku.ca/
The Harriet Tubman Institute is dedicated to capturing, studying, and telling the story of the migration
of African peoples around the globe, from centuries ago to the present day. We search the world for
materials that help us know and understand this history – from official and personal documents to
photographs, interviews and maps. Whenever possible, we digitally preserve and make these accessible to
anyone with an interest in seeing and learning from this rich store of information.
Legacies of British Slave-ownership
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/
Legacies
of British Slave-ownership is the umbrella for two projects based at UCL tracing the impact of
slave-ownership on the formation of modern Britain: the ESRC-funded Legacies of British
Slave-ownership project, now complete, and the ESRC and AHRC-funded Structure and
significance of British Caribbean slave-ownership 1763-1833, running from 2013-2015.
New York Public Library Africana and Black History Collection
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?topic=history&collection_list=AfricanaBlackHistory&col_id=147
There are 533 digital objects with the search term “slave.” Several thousand items ranging
from historical documents and rare visual materials to contemporary photo-journalism, relating to the
entirety of African American history from the 16th century to the present.
Slaves and the Courts 1740-1860
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sthtml/sthome.html
This site contains the full-text of over 100 pamphlets published between 1772 and 1889, trial reports
and eye witness accounts. Topics covered include: slave law and the movement towards emancipation.
Famous figures featured include: Dred Scott, John C. Calhoun and John Quincy Adams. The site is part of
the American Memory Collection of the Library of Congress.
Slave Archival Collection
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ilissdsa/text_files/database_intro2.htm
The following alphabetical extract of slave data was generated from a campaign to collect names of
enslaved ancestors from living descendants across the country. This is an ongoing project to preserve
slave genealogy and history for future generations.
UNESCO Slave Trade Archives Project
http://webworld.unesco.org/slave_quest/en/description.html
The Slave Trade Archives Project, initiated by UNESCO, is concerned with the access to and preservation
of original archive materials relating to the slave trade. The project, which is funded by the Norwegian
Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD). The countries foreseen as participating in
the project at this stage are: Angola, Benin, Brazil, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of
Congo, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Mozambique, Nigeria, Republic of Congo,
Senegal, and Togo.
Unknown No Longer: Virginia Historical Society
http://unknownnolonger.vahistorical.org/
This database is the latest step by the Virginia Historical Society to increase access to its varied
collections relating to Virginians of African descent. Since its founding in 1831, the VHS has collected
unpublished manuscripts, a collection that now numbers more than 8 million processed items.
Reference
Family Tree Magazine’s African-American
Heritage Research Guide ($4.00)
The genealogical tips and tools in the African-American Heritage Research Guide will help you discover
your family's history. Includes “Essential Web sites, books and other tools recommended by our
editors and experts”
Slave Datasets Not Online
Laird Bergad LBergad@gc.cuny.edu
Slaves in Matanzas and in Minas Gerais Brazil
Laird Bergad, Fe Iglesias Garcia, and Maria del Carmen Barcia - Cuban slave sales.
Douglas B. Chambers (University of Southern Mississippi) has a database about runaway slaves in Jamaica
which includes ethnicity designations.
Manolo Florentino (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), Brazil. Aside from his old and recent work on
trans-Atlantic slave trade voyages to Brazil, he has a database of individual slaves to study family
formation in Rio and surrounding areas.
Linda Heywood and John K. Thornton (both at Boston University) refer to their slave database in early
Dutch and British documents in the Americas with slave names from which they extrapolate ethnicity
designations and conclude they were almost all West Central Africans.
Paul Lachance (University of Ottawa) – Paul LaChance has details about all the estates inventoried in
New Orleans after 1805. He stresses material culture and fiscal values of all property including slaves.
He has also studied and maybe databased wills in New Orleans from the 18th thru the nineteenth
centuries and published a distinguished article from that research.
