African American Research Guide

This is the beginning of a research guide for advice and resources for doing genealogical research involving African American heritage and slavery.

Where to Start

Internal Links

• African-American Patriots and Loyalists

External Links

• AFRICAN AMERICAN GENEALOGY GROUP OF THE MIAMI VALLEY
• African American Genealogy
• African-Native Genealogy and History
• AfriGeneas ~ African American & African Ancestored Genealogy
• African American Genealogy Research Center
• The Mid-Atlantic African American Genealogy Conference
• Rediscovering the Names and Lives of Slaves, Freedpersons and Their Descendants
• Virginia Emigrants to Liberia
• Compilation of African-American-related Genealogy News and Sources from the Examiner.com
• Paul Heinegg, Free African Americans of North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina from the Colonial Period to about 1820, 5th ed. (Baltimore: Clearfield, 2005). Online version and more. Heinegg's research begins in the 1600 and 1700s and continues forward to approximately the 1810 and 1820 time frame.
• John Hope Franklin, The Free Negro in North Carolina 1790-1860, originally published in 1943, re-issued (WHEN?). While there has been considerable more scholarship done since it was originally published, it is still a must read if you are going to pursue this topic.
• African American Biographical Database - Full text, with illustrations, of more than 40,000 biographies, 1790-1950. Available on an annual subscription.
• African American Pamphlets - Library of Congress's collection of Daniel A. P. Murray Pamphlets, presenting a review of history and culture spanning almost one hundred years (1818-1907). Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, and Emanuel Love.
• Freedmen and Southern Society Project - Documenting the history of emancipation during the era of the American Civil War, in the words of the participants themselves.
• African American Resources at the Cincinnati Historical Society Library - Guide to 20th Century African American individuals, organizations and topics from the Greater Cincinnati area. Find books, articles, photographs and manuscripts.
• Slave Cemetery in Colonial Newport - Extensive information regarding one of America's oldest and largest slave and free person African-American cemetery.
• Large Slaveholders of 1860 and African American Surname Matches from 1870 - List of large slaveholders and surname matches with an alphabetical index of holders of 10% of all slaves in the U.S.
• Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy - Database of information on 100,000 slaves including slave names, genders, ages, occupations, illnesses, family relationships, ethnicity, places of origin, prices paid by slave owners, and slaves' emancipations.
• Slave Manifests - Transcriptions of slave manifests for the port of New Orleans. NARA record group 36 records the movement of slaves between U.S. ports.
• AfriGeneas - Site devoted to African American genealogy. Features mail lists, message boards, and daily and weekly genealogy chats.
• Sojourner Truth: Abolitionist & Women's Rights Advocate

Tri-Racial Isolates

Tri-racial describes populations thought to be of mixed European, sub-Saharan African, and Native American ancestry. Although there is no consensus on how many such groups exist, estimates range as high as 200.

• According to experts (including E.S. Mills), the best place to start for a genealogical study of tri-racial isolates in the Carolinas (and Tennessee and Virginia) would be a pair of articles done in the 1990s by :

1. Dr. Virginia DeMarce, "Very Slitly Mixt': Tri-Racial Isolate Families of the Upper South---A Genealogical Study," National Genealogical Society Quarterly, 80 (March 1992): 5-35. DeMarce is former president of the National Genealogical Society and a long-time staff historian/genealogist at BIA, who holds a history Ph.D from UCLA-Berkeley
2. Dr. Virginia DeMarce, "Looking at Legends---Lumbee and Melungeon: Applied Genealogy and the Origins of Tri-racial Isolate Settlements," NGSQ 81 (March 1993): 24-45."

• Black Indian, African Americans and Native Americans, Black family history, Indian family - African American history (especially historic and current connections with Native Americans,) Black history, social history of the American Mid-West, family history, and commemorating Kansas history.
• Melungeon webpage links:

1. Melungeon Resource Page
2. Melungeon Links of Interest
3. Wikipedia: Melungeon entry

Discussion Fora / Forums

• African-Native American Genealogy Forum - Forum for discussing the genealogy and history of the Oklahoma Freedmen -- the African citizens of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole Nations. These are the Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes.