slavenamerollproject.blogspot.com
*Everyone please add to your group resources*
What is The Slave Name Roll Project?
During Black History Month in 2015 a Facebook group of Genealogy Bloggers began the Slave Name Roll Project with five contributions. The project objective 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. Documents such as wills and other probate records, bills of sale, court cases and newspaper advertisements for run away slaves are often rich sources of information.
We hope you will consider making contributions to this project as you find source documents which name slaves in your research. Simply, leave a comment on any post. Please include the following information:
Name of the enslaved (usually only a given name)
Name of the slave owner
Source of the information (will, estate inventory, court case, deed, etc.)
Date and location of the source information
Thank you for your contributions!
If you have a success using this project in finding your enslaved ancestors we hope you will share that success with us by leaving a comment.
http://slavenamerollproject.blogspot.com/
@African American Genealogy Research
@Virginia Genealogy Research
@Adoption and Unknown Family Research
@Family History Research
@Family & Community—Connect & Inspire!
@Carolyn Webber
@Dennis J Yancey
Comments
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sounds like a great project
I have also considered stuff closely related to this.
I congratulate you all on the desire to be involved in something like this!!! 😃
and I also have felt the need to ensue this type of information is preserved and made available to those looking for it.
(be sure to expand post to see my entire response)
However - one should also consider - if there are projects just like this that are already set up to do this and do so with much more extensive and reliable hardware, software to much better handle this type of thing - then would it possibly be better to support those projects:
a few come to mind:
http://www.afrigeneas.com/ as well as various on this page: http://yanceyfamilygenealogy.org/slavery.htm
Family Bible projects are very similar to this - in the "architecture" of how they work
I could probably mention 20 or so totally cool - Family Bible projects on the web - that have ultimately "crashed and burned" (I'm being over dramatic)
but for the most part are dead now (no longer active) and whose data is now at risk - because it was reliant on one (or a few) single passionate person who had a dream
and now that person may be dead, unable to continue the effort, no longer interested. -or the software/hardware that was being used - after time was no longer able to serve the need
In summary - I love the subject and have actually considered it myself
I have tons I could contribute
I simply ask all to be careful that you don't place your foundation on a house of cards - that all comes tumbling down - when a few key people, or key hardware/software - fails or can no longer be used.
Think about the project long term - and what can be done to ensure that at least the data is retained long term (somewhere that will be around long term - such as FamilySearch) - even if the system can not be.
Keep me posted.
Dennis
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Marvelous initiative! Are you aware of the "One Shared Story" (click the link) project that was very recently showcased in a teleconference available to some in the FS Community group? This project would be wonderful to connect with the One Shared Story project. One of the things that this project could greatly help with is the geospatial linking. On that page is a group of photos with topics. Scroll to the right and (at least currently) the 2nd set of images includes one titled "Story Map." That links directly to the geospatial linking aspect of their overall project, which has begun to allow tracking of slaves due to the location data in such documents as noted in your post like wills, probate records, family moves, selling of slaves to a new location, etc.
https://oss.maps.arcgis.com/home/index.html
The power of a relational database is astounding. Unfortunately it may be used for less comfortable purposes such as putting together every piece of information a giant corporation can obtain about you from your phone apps, online purchases, "free" email account that you assumed was private but isn't, along with a whole host of other publicly available data. But a good database application can also take tiny bits of seemingly unrelated information and link them together to one person for genealogical and family history research purposes in incredibly available and useful ways. This is just one of them, but it's a breakthrough means of gathering slave data, linking all the previously unknown or at least unlinked data to specific individuals, and making that data easily available to masses of people in very easily searchable ways. And that's just what this forum is for - adding to the connections. Great post!
-- Chris
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Another similar project is The Beyond Kin Project - https://beyondkin.org/
This project has a methodology for documenting slaveholder/enslaved person connections in family trees using those existing software tools that enable this e.g., Ancestry. It helps you to track the movement of enslaved persons in your own tree and, where trees are public, helps researchers researching the same people to make connections. The Project also has a Register for logging enslaved people. As a descendent of slaveholder ancestors, I have started to use this methodology in my own tree.
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Here is a collection of Family Bibles that contain records of slaves etc.
https://www.familysearch.org/photos/gallery/album/615926
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Are you aware of the WPA Project where former slaves were interviewed and their stories were typewritten? My mother was a typist for some of these Narratives in East Texas. For example: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/mss/mesn/142/142.pdf and https://www.archives.gov/files/research/african-americans/slave-narratives.pdf
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yes - WPA slave Narratives
do you have a specific question about them?
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what are really nice are some of the "readings" from these narratives
as one example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoIreNPkReM
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Here is some of them.
note these items being created by the government - are in the "public domain" and free from coppyright.
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Can you check this link? I got an error message.
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all these were valid
what error do you get?
(are you under some internet filter?)
valid: https://beyondkin.org/
valid: https://www.familysearch.org/photos/gallery/album/615926
valid: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/mss/mesn/142/142.pdf
valid: https://www.archives.gov/files/research/african-americans/slave-narratives.pdf
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for this link - you may need to be logged on to FS
https://www.familysearch.org/photos/gallery/album/615926
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X24MOM: are you a member of the blogger group?
(when I first responded for some reason I assumed you were - now Im guessing your arent - but just wanted to share)
here are links to various slave records that I continue to compile
slave bible records
https://www.familysearch.org/photos/gallery/album/615926
other african american records - many for whom were former slaves
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@Dennis J Yancey what blogger group? you mean the one i posted? no lol im not a member of any blogger group 😃 should I be? ive thought about starting one just to have a place to keep my own personal research notes and stuff lol but .... thats just another thing on one of my many lists of things to do
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yes - the one you posted - Slave Name Roll Project
I misread your original post when I first read it - and thought you were part of the group
that why my initial response had the tone it did.
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