Ties That Binds The Bottoms Presentation
Free sites
Start with what is free. FamilySearch costs nothing and holds indexed copies of much of what follows; it asks for an account, not a card number. The National Archives’ own African American research guide is the map to the federal holdings.
The Freedmen’s Bureau. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, Record Group 105, was created by act of Congress on 3 March 1865 and not abolished until 1872, though the bulk of its work ran from June 1865 to December 1868. Its agents issued rations, ran hospitals and schools, supervised labor contracts, heard apprenticeship disputes, helped legalize marriages entered into during slavery, arranged transport for people trying to find family again, and helped Black soldiers claim back pay and pensions. Every one of those activities generated paper with names on it. Coverage is uneven — it varies by state, by office, and by what survived.
The Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company. The Freedman’s Bank was incorporated the same day, 3 March 1865, ran some 37 offices across 17 states and the District of Columbia, and failed in 1874. Genealogists care about it for one reason: opening an account meant answering questions, and a clerk wrote the answers down. A signature card can carry a depositor’s name and age, birthplace, residence and occupation, the names of parents, spouse, children, brothers and sisters — and sometimes the name of the person who had held them. Not every card is complete. A complete one can move you a whole generation.
Cohabitation registers. After emancipation, some states let couples register marriages the law had previously refused to recognize. Virginia’s date from February 1866, and North Carolina’s from March of that year, recording the couple’s names and ages, how long they had been together, and sometimes the former enslaver’s name and the number of their children.
Military service and pensions. The compiled service records of the United States Colored Troops are unusual: alongside the muster cards they can hold deeds of manumission, oaths of allegiance, proof of ownership and bills of sale. The pension files are richer still, because a widow claiming a pension had to prove a marriage and a family, and the proof arrived as sworn statements from people who had been there. That testimony exists nowhere else.
County records, and the hardest method. Wills, probate inventories, estate divisions, deeds and bills of sale. Enslaved people appear in them as property, listed under the enslaver’s name with a first name, an age and a valuation. The method follows from that: you stop searching for your own family’s surname and start researching the household that held them. It is unpleasant work, and it is frequently the only work available.
Testimony. The Library of Congress holds Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938. Read them, and read them carefully: the people interviewed were very old, the interviewers were mostly white and mostly Southern, and the transcription conventions of the period did the speakers no favors. None of that makes the narratives worthless. It makes them evidence that needs handling.
People who do this. The Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society has chapters across the country. A local society will know which county clerk answers the phone and which courthouse burned, and that knowledge exists in no database.
Free versus paid. FamilySearch and the National Archives cost nothing. The large subscription databases are often free through a public library, sometimes from home with a library card. Ask a librarian before paying, and ask a reference archivist before concluding that a record does not exist.
Subcriptions and or fees sites
Ancestry.com – Charges for DNA kit and acess to research.
Familytreedna.com – Charges for DNA testing kit (autosomonal, Mt and Y) Founded in 2000, the company is unique because it offers three distinct types of DNA tests (Y, Mt and autosomnal) to explore deep family history.
Myheritage.com – an online geneaology platform and DNA testing service used to research family history, build family trees, and connect living relatives.
Gedmatch.com – a free online database and utility platform used for genetic genealogy research and DNA data comparison; for monthly fee, higher level of analyses and matching tools.