Familiarity with slave naming practices is essential for tracing early black family relationships; yet, this too is a complicated task. Slaves did not have their own surnames and only occasionally was an African's first name retained. The common practice was for the owner to replace an African's name with one thought appropriate for a slave, then the master's family name was added as an informal method of identifying the slave with that owner. If sold, the slave became known by the new master's name. Therefore, without supporting evidence, historians can assume very little about kinship between slaves sharing the same family name. They may have been married, siblings, or a parent and child - even cousins. But unless an additional reference establishes their kinship, all that can be said is that they had the same owner.

    Furthermore the issue is further clouded by the fact that two slaves may be related, yet contain different names because one took the surname of a new master. Finally, some emancipated slaves who remained in the area appear to have retained the surname of the owner who granted freedom, or the one with whom the slave most closely identified. This appearance of passively accepting the white family's surname could be, instead, a deliberate choice of free people to preserve their identity with significant members of their own black family.

    Much has been written about the breaking up of American slave families, yet many managed to stay intact. Whites did not recognize non-traditional marriages and, as a result, the union was not recorded. Without documentation of these unions, the total number of black families during the period remains unknown. The records do show, however, that some black couples chose to have their marriages performed by a minister, usually of the same church as an owner or former master, and the majority of these families remained in the town for many years after marriage.

    In adopting ceremonies of baptism and marriage that were acceptable in white society, some blacks seemed to be challenging whites to recognize the legitimacy of their families, thereby making it possible for blacks to be a part of the larger community. Most black people who continued to live in the same area after emancipation had connections with a local church and ties to the white community. Some degree of emotional bonding would have been inevitable between masters and servants who had lived in the same house, shared the intimacies of family life, performed work together in kitchens and gardens, on the docks and in shops. If one or both partners in a black marriage had grown up in the area, they were likely to have had relatives and loved ones nearby, some possibly still in bondage, whom they would not want to abandon. Older people would have been reluctant to venture out into an unknown and a very dangerous land.

    The generic label of "slaves" found in census reports without designations of sex and age do not account for the diversity of relationships which existed in that group. Clearly many adults who considered themselves married had to live separated from spouses and from their children if most slaves lived "singularly." Owners had the ultimate authority in the lives of slaves, including the right to separate and sell them without regard to familial relationships. Because children became increasingly inconvenient for masters to maintain as they matured, a slave child would be sold if he or she were not needed by the master, generally when the child was no longer dependent on the mother, yet still young enough to be trained to suit a new owner. Servants could use secondhand clothing, but the household would have to provide each with additional food, medical care and, perhaps most challenging for slave owners, lodging in the house. With a limited amount of work available to employ slave labor, those whose maintenance became unprofitable had to leave.

    Other slaves were sold because of their uncooperative or rebellious behavior. Repeat offenders, including captured runaways, faced the possibility of being sold to the dreaded West Indies where owners of sugar plantations were notoriously barbaric in their treatment of slaves. The selling of slaves could explain the disappearances of some of those slave children and adults whose names do not appear again in records after baptism.

    Some free blacks bought slaves, not to own them but to free them. For example as late as 1799 a black mariner, Richard Mullenoux, purchased from William Appleton a 19 year-old woman and the couple was married one week later. The public record of one's free status was not just an act of pride; it served as an assurance against the ever-present possibility of a black person being kidnapped and sold as a captured runaway in some distance place.

    Of particular interest are the occasions when black people used the town records to establish the fact that they were free. Following the legal precedent set in the colony of Virginia in 1652, laws throughout the colonies provided that the status of children as slave or free would be determined by the status of the mother. Therefore, on June 10, 1760 a free mulatto woman named Leisha Webb had the town clerk record that she and the eight children belonging to her and to her husband "Negro Ceasor, a slave" were free persons. A slave named Violet bought her freedom from Abraham Dearborn on March 25, 1778; she later married Newport, the emancipated slave of Ezra Stiles, and on November 13, 1780 the couple took their freedom papers to the town clerk giving public notice that they and their infant son were free citizens.

    A number of Muslims are known to have lived in New Netherland and New York in the seventeenth century, among them Anthony Jansen van Salee, whose Koran still exists. It is unclear what percentage of them arrived as slaves, but they appeared to have congregated in the vicinity of Gravesend in present-day Brooklyn, which was known to have liberal religious attitudes.

    Despite the known existance of Muslims in early New York there are no known studies of them or their community. It is possible that the Muslim religion had some influence in laws prohibiting Africans from gathering together in Kings County, Long Island, after 1684. It appears that most Muslims eventually converted to Reformed Christianity in the New York City, region, though the community may have merely gone underground.

    During the basic research process the researcher traces a family line back through the federal censuses as far as can be. For most of those searching African American lines the search usually ends at the 1870 Census. African American slaves didn't appear by name on federal censuses before 1870 because they were property.

    But they were identified by name on other records. They were named in deeds, wills and other court records. Court records are the next step in the research process after the 1870 Census, particularly wills and intestate records. Intestate records list the property the deceased person left behind if that person did not leave a will.

    The researcher tries to find former slaves by name. Here's where you run into your first problem. Court records usually give only the first names of slaves. However, you must identify your ancestors by surname. How do you do this?

    After emancipation former slaves were able to choose any name they desired. In many cases they chose the name of their last owner. In many cases they chose the name of a previous owner. And in many cases they did not choose a name of any former owner. They wanted to distance themselves from slavery.

    So how do you find slave ancestors? Look through court records for first names that you recognize as belonging to your 1870 families.

    African Americans, regardless of whether their ancestors were free or slave, are usually able to trace their ancestry back to the end of the Civil War without too much difficulty using the same sources white Americans use.

    Pre-Emancipation slaves were considered the personal property of their owners and are identified by the plantation records. Research then focuses upon the owner's family and the records it produced as slave owners, as well as on the slave family itself. Searching for slave ancestors always requires a thorough investigation of the white slave-owning family in all public and historical records.

    The census records of 1870 are the first to list blacks by name. In 1850 & 1860 slave statistics were gathered, but did not list slaves by name, just tallied them, and are useful as circumstantial evidence that a slave of a certain age and sex was the property of a particular owner. Free blacks and their families names were included in 1850 & 1860.

    Military records from the Revolutionary War are available. Birth records are available as the slave owners needed to protect his personal property by officially recording it. If you know the birthdate, you can search the birth records for a male or female slave born on that date and an owner/plantation name will be given. Bills of sale will be found amoung land records, estate records or miscellaneous county records. Slave trade manifests are available at the National Archives, Washington, D.C.

    Starting in 1850, another supplemental schedule, the mortality schedule, listed all deaths within a year before the regular census enumeration. The deaths of blacks and mulattoes, both free and slave, are recorded in them, even though their names have not been included in many of the indexes to these schedules.

    The deaths of slaves were generally enumerated in four fashions:

    Slaves were property. As distasteful as we find it today, this unfortunate fact is the all-encompassing reality that informs slave genealogical research. And so the focus of research must always to some extent be on the slaveowner. Probate records are important tools in this process. As valued parts of an estate, slaves were sometimes mentioned by name or may have been referred to as having been inherited from another family member or else purchased from a particular party.

    For example, one David C. Moore of Duplin County, North Carolina, died in late 1863 or early 1864, leaving to his son Thomas "one half of that portion of my negroes known as Megee Negroes including Martha & her three children excepting those that I purchased from Thomas H. Megee namely Aaron, Mary & three children." Note that slaves were specifically identified only insofar as the identification served the purposes of the testator. Therefore, slaves can be identified in a will by name and by family, or else can be subsumed as simply an anonymous portion of a slaveholding. Generally speaking, the smaller the number of slaves in an estate, the more likely there will be some sort of identifying language in the will.

    This overview of researching slave ancestors has been necessarily brief. In reality there is a tremendous amount of material written on the subject. One of the best online resources for help in researching African American families is Afrigeneas. They can be found at:

The Afrigeneas Homepage

    Another good place to start your search is Cyndi Howell's list at:

Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet

    For articles to help you get started on your family quest I would suggest that you visit the following two websites:

Ancestry.com

Family Tree Maker

    Both sites have a tremendous number of archived articles that can answer a lot of your toughest research questions as well as the easy ones you may be too embarrassed to ask. They also have blank forms you can print out for doing research in Census records and doing other forms of research.

    One final website you should check out is Rootsweb. They host an enormous number of databases and more importantly, surname mailing lists which you can join. Here you can post queries on your particular families and in all probability will make some unexpected connections and discoveries along the way. This link will take you to their website:

Rootsweb Genealogical Data Cooperative

    I want to wish you the best of luck with your research. You'll find it challenging, frustrating and rewarding all at the same time. Just keep in mind that we seldom value that which comes easily. The sense of accomplishment you'll feel at the end of the day is something that no one can take away from you.

    Best wishes,

    Chris