Genealogy: Finding Your Ancestors Online: African Americans

• Ancestry

  • 

  Available through Cornell or a local public library or personal subscription Provides access to historical documents and photos, local narratives, oral histories, indexes and other resources in over 30,000 databases that span from the 1500s to the 2000s. The Library Edition of Ancestry.com has fewer personalized functions and options than the versions available to private subscribers. More detail about the differences
• FamilySearch

  Use catalog not the general search. (requires registering)
  Provided by LDS. Sources are great. Be wary of Information that is volunteer-sourced and of uneven quality. .
  Recommended: International Genealogical Index(IGI) index of birth and marriage registers from all over the world submitted by volunteers who transcribed information from the microfilms of original records collected by the FHS; Family History Library an online catalog. Microfilm can be borrowed through a local Family History Center

• American Ancestors  Provided by New England Historic Genealogical Society (requires registering as a guest)  Free chat with a genealogist service.
• US Black Heritage Project on Wikitree
• AfriGeneas: African ancestored genealogy  Focuses on African American genealogy, to researching African Ancestry in the Americas in particular and to genealogical research and resources in general.
• Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Association (AAHGS)  National organization with local chapters. Annual conference.
• Black Genesis.com; tips, strategies, and resources from an experienced genealogist

Selected resources for researching the formerly enslaved:

Freedmen's Bureau & Bank Records (Guide)
After the Civil War, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (the Freedmen's Bureau) provided assistance to tens of thousands of the formerly enslaved and impoverished whites in the Southern States and the District of Columbia.

• Recommended: NARA guide to The Freedmen’s Bureau – for understanding the materials, details about field offices, and for which rolls are online, etc.

• Mapping the Freedmen’s Bureau: can help identify fields offices of interest as well as hospitals, schools, field offices, camps, banks, etc.

• Three options for searching Freedmen's Bureau online (indexed differently and provide different results):

  • Ancestryà search from card catalog
  • FamilySearch àrecords àbrowse by state—freedmen’s will come up
  • Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives (SOVA): conveniently arranged according to NARA guide

More resources:

• Digital Library of American Slavery - includes deeds and other documents
• Freedom on the Move - searchable newspaper advertisements placed to recover self-liberating people
• 10 million names.org  a collaborative project dedicated to recovering the names of the estimated 10 million men, women, and children of African descent who were enslaved in pre- and post-colonial America (specifically, the territory that would become the United States) between the 1500s and 1865.
• Enslaved.org a discovery hub that helps users to search and find information from a large and growing number of datasets and digital projects.
• Deeds of emancipation through Virginia Untold-- digitized documents on African Americans in Virginia from the State Library of Virginia, including deeds of emancipation and other states/digital collections

Tips for researching and recording the enslaved & enslavers in family trees:

• Reclaiming Kin
• Beyond Kin
• Gramps  Free desktop genealogical software as well as a community which is more customizable that other genealogy software
  Recording enslaved people and their enslavers, or other relationships, can be accomplished by using SyncAssociation