Documenting the Enslaved in Your Family Tree | Ancestry

hi everyone Krista Cohen here with another episode of the barefoot genealogist today we are talking about documenting the enslaved in our family histories now this presentation is a little bit sensitive and it is directed mainly at my white friends and colleagues and those of you who are looking into your slaveholder ancestors for those of you who are people of color I have consulted with several of my colleagues who are also blacks and descendants of those who are formerly enslaved and I have tried to be as sensitive as possible about this subject but the truth of the matter is I'm white and so hopefully I'm offensive to anybody I do want to start this with a bit of a story and I hope that this story is taken in the correct spirit in which I share it but it's a story that helps you understand how I discovered one of the slaveholders in my own family tree and some of my feelings about him and about the circumstances surrounding his life and then I will get to some tips about how I am documenting those that he enslaved and trying to connect with the descendants of those individuals so if you want to skip the story you can skip to the end for those tips but let me just share with you the story about my six times great-grandmother Margaret Lawrence so this is my granny Lawrence it's my mom's grandmother and if you go back on her Lawrence line all the way back here you will find a woman in Margaret Lawrence she was born in 1709 in England she was a bit of a rebellious teenager and she left her parents faith and because of that she was kicked out of her home in a very young age and had to fend for herself ended up getting herself into some trouble ended up in Old Bailey prison in London and then her sentence was that she was going to be shipped off to America and on a prison ship when she got to America she was purchased for an indenter ship by a man named Tobias Phillips who was 22 years her senior he was married with a family he was from Richmond Virginia and he owns a large piece of property in Richmond Virginia now he set her up on his property and within just a couple of years she had a couple of children and the rumor of course in the family has always been that even though her two children bear the lorentz name that Tobias Phillips was in fact their father that this was a non-consensual relationship whereby he fathered children with this indentured servant woman that that he essentially owned for that period of time now my Margaret Lawrence is a white woman from England and she was not a slave she was an indentured servant and the difference between that is is that she had hope of of her indenture ship ending her adventure ship was for a period of time and when that indenture ship was over she was then free to go now the circumstances of the time might not have made that an easy endeavor but but there was that hope at least and her two children they were both boys were born into these circumstances and unfortunately she died while they were still very young again the family story is that she was pregnant with another child and died in childbirth or as a result of complications of that pregnancy and so her two children now are left with this man who is their father but who does not acknowledge them as their father and one of the things we discover about Tobias Phillips very shortly after this because he actually dies a year later is that he makes her children fulfill the contract of her indenture ship so they have to stay as his servants until they come of age and we learned that in his will and through some of his estate papers now I was looking into those estate papers because specifically I was trying to prove whether or not these two boys were in fact the children of Tobias Phillips and what I discovered is while he makes some statements or cement provides some information about them fulfilling their mother's indenture ship and remaining as servants to him and to those who inherit his estate until they turn out well until they come of age that he never calls them by he never calls them his sons he always refers to them with the last name of Florence they continued with the last name of Laurence for the remainder of their lives so there was still this little bit of hesitation or question about whether or not he actually was their father of course that was the story but but we didn't have any solid proof at that point but what I did discover in the process of all of that research was his will and in his will he very specifically lists some some black slaves now I knew this was a possibility I fully expected it my mother's family is all southern deep Southern roots all the way back to colonial times and I was actually more surprised that I hadn't come across it sooner or in her family tree and so here I was faced with it now I've got the notes here on my screen so you can kind of see what I've done is I've taken that will or that probate actually it's not just the will there's a whole probate file and I've transcribed it so that I have it available here in my notes so that I can refer to it without having to go try and reread that original image over and over and so as I'm transcribing this well there are some things that come out about this man's personality in his probate records and one of them is that he was he he was a very controlling and likely a very cruel man for a lot of different reasons so one of those reasons and I'm just going to read it and try not to get emotional about it is this first item in his will where he says I give to my son George Phillips Negro Boleyn and the use of my negro wench for demur until she belt shall be delivered of three children her firstborn I give to my daughter Elizabeth her second to William Dell the younger the third to my daughter Hannah and then the property to vest my son George now if I've understood that correctly he has two Negro slaves Boleyn and for de mer and for de mer is to be bred likely with George until she delivers three children and then this man has decided that even long after his death he will continue to make provisions about where the children of that negro slave are are sent as property to be inherited by his other children I remember the first time I saw this just being it didn't surprise me he had slaves it surprised me the callous nature in which he referred to them and from that time forward I have had this desire to find Florida more man I haven't been horribly successful yet I have made progress and I am making discovering some clues but here is kinda to put this in some perspective one of the problems that we deal with as we try to document the lives of the enslaved our black cousins many of them who are actually our cousins because of these former slaveholders have the ability just like any of us to trace their family history from Tucson to from you know 2017 from today back to 1870 and then they hit what we call the 1870 wall we we've defined 1870 because emancipation was issued immediately following the civil war in the 1860s so 1870 is the first u.s. federal census where those who were formerly enslaved are listed on the federal census as free individuals they're listed in households with their full names and their ages and their genders and their birthplaces so we've got more complete information or the same information that has been to that point for white families for two decades 1850 is the first census in which white families every name was every household was listed or those who were free blacks or other people of color who were free so 1850 and 1860 censuses list the names of everyone who was free and in 1870 lists the name of everyone who was free but that is the first census following emancipation now in 1850 and 1860 there is a supplement to the census which is called the slave schedules where essentially it lists the name of the slave holder and then it will list the genders and the ages of those those he enslaves so no names no other personally identifying information usually just the age and the gender listed under the name of the slave holder so this 1870 wall is a for those who were formerly enslaved or descent from this refer mele enslaved as is a really solid brick wall it's a very difficult thing one of the other challenges has to do with names there are a lot of myths there are a lot of a lot of ways in which people who were formerly enslaved took names and there are a lot of instances in which those names they changed those names so typically and this is not in every case but typically those were who were enslaved or give were given a given name and most of them are many of them did not have a surname until after emancipation now some some did there are obviously exceptions to that rule for various reasons but most did not have a surname until after emancipation so that becomes one of the difficulties for our black cousins in tracing prior to 1870 is you have unless significant piece of personally identifying information to allow you to find you've to find your ancestors number two as it relates to names many times those names were changed so immediately following an Ansel patient depending on their circumstances they may have been given a surname they may have taken a surname and in ensuing years they may have changed that surname all for varying reasons now some of the patterns that we see again there are exceptions but some of the patterns that we see a name might be given of the last slaveholder so now there is a group of people who may or may not be genetically related to one another who all have the same last name because that is the name of their last slaveholder now a year or two down the road as after emancipation as they start to exercise some of their freedoms some of them may make a decision that they no longer wants you bear the name of that last slave holder some of them choose a name of a previous slave holder maybe it was the first slave holder in their family maybe it was their first slave holder maybe it is a prominent person in their community where they're now living maybe it is in some cases I just I did a research project for an african-american family where the they had identified who the oldest black man in their community was he was he was a slave who had been brought from Africa and so he was revered in their community and so many of them took his given name Amos as their surname and so now you have this entire community with 20 or 30 families who have the last name of Amos and some of them are related and some of them are not related and for years a lot of people were looking in this community for a slaveholder with the last name of Amos and it turns out that it was not a slaveholder name it was actually the given name of the oldest black gentlemen in their community who had who had come from Africa or been forcibly brought over from Africa so a lot of different ways in which individuals following emancipation end up with their names and so one of the things that is key to keep in mind if you are going to try to trace the descendants of the slaves that you discover in your family history research is to recognize that names are not always the personally identifiable information that they are with traditional European based research and so you have to start to think about other ways in which to identify in individuals and that's a good exercise because you know people are about names are important names are significant but they are not the only piece of identifying information one of the other challenges that we have on on both sides of this equation is that we are looking at a history of 250 years of slavery where the records might be great records but you still have to tie all of the pieces together before you get past that 1870 wall to be able to connect with people who might be living today who are descendants of that individual and so that's been my challenge here with Tobias Phillips Tobias Phillips died in 1740 that's a hundred and thirty years before emancipation so as I have begun to trace now George Phillips and Fordham ER and that family to see if I can figure out what happens to them I'm working piece by piece through some of these records many in my case which are not online so I'm going to need to go to the archives in Richmond Virginia to look through some of these records to make some of these connections to continue to trace for diverse family one generation at a time the other problem of course is with and this is something we have to be super sensitive to is that these families are not kept together they are forcibly separated so again in traditional European research one of the identifiable pieces of information we often have is that families move together in clusters they buy and sell land with each other there are a lot of ways in which we can uncover them in some of these families of slaves what we're discovering is like in this case for Demers children were given away - to the siblings of George and so now we have to trace those families to see what happens to each of these branches of four Demers family so it's it's difficult but in my mind I think it is so significant and here's why and I struggled with how to say this because there's a phrase that that's I'm really sensitive to and that is I don't want to come across as a white Savior I don't want to come across as I have the answers because I don't what I have is a great desire to connect people with their family history and that desire extends to everyone everyone but particularly for my african-american cousins and they are cousins and some of them we've genetically proven we're cousins and they're stuck with me now I have this desire to help because I have I have the records in many cases I have some of those connections some of those threads and I want to be able to extend those threads enough that they can pick up those threads and continue on with them themselves I just I just feel that that's so important and so let me just share with you then some of the ways I've kind of seeded it through this story of Tobias and and Maggie and and George and for demur but I want to just make sure we get through a bulleted list of some of the records that you can use to do this research and then some of the ways in my tree that I've chosen and some other places where I've chosen to document this information so let's start with record that you can use to discover those who are enslaved one of the things you'll need to look at to start is the 1850 and 1860 census records just because your ancestor was poor does not mean they were not a slaveholder and I think sometimes we feel like we're safe because they weren't make note of those property values on the 1850 and 1860 census records if there is any property value at all it could be that that property is a slave or a couple of slaves and so you might need to go digging into property records at that point now the 1850 and 1860 census records as I said there's also a slave schedule that you can look up by the name of your white ancestor to see to see if they had slaves as property those are the most recent records those are going to be the easiest ones to work with again it's going to be the easiest to jump that 1870 wall and connect with individuals in the 1870 census where you can pass that information along prior to that you're going to need to use almost exclusively property records and probate records now probate records are the richest source of information about property about relationships and about inheritance as you can see from that we'll of Tobias Phillips he gave very explicit instructions about what was to happen to those that he enslaved who they were to be inherited by and in some cases how they were to be used and that as horrific as it as it is is information that is invaluable to helping us connect these families probate records are not just wills so in the case of Tobias Phillips I have his will but I also have the letters of administration the letters of guardianship for his children so I can start to build this idea of this community around him who were his associates who were his business associates who were the people he trusted and worked with what was the structure of his family and how did that interact with the families of those that he enslaved or the families of those that he indentured in the case of of Maggie and her two sons and so we start to develop this picture of him and of his property there were also inventories and the inventory clarified for me that the two slaves that he names in the will are the only two slaves that he had so just because somebody doesn't name a slave doesn't mean they don't have slaves so that inventory in the probate file becomes really important as well the times that I have noticed where slaves have been named in the will is usually because there is some instructions specific instructions about which slaves are to be inherited by which family members in some cases there will just be a general all of my property inheritance given to a spouse or to an oldest son without documenting the details and so that inventory is is almost as important in some cases more important than the actual will so all of that is part of those probate files and searching those ancestry has I think 1.7 million probate files available online only the name of the primary individual has been indexed and so again one of the challenges for our cousins who are people of color is the names of the slaves the names of the children the names of the you know witnesses whatever like none of that has been indexed the only thing that is searchable in those probate records is the name of the primary individual and so as we make those discoveries as we find those records making sure that we document the names and maybe even attach that probate record to not just the person whose probate file it is but also to the other individuals named in the will or in those property inventories is really important another really powerful tool for connecting us with our cousins who are people of color is ancestry DNA so some of you may have heard the story several years ago there's a genealogist by the name of Nika Smith who I adore and respect so much and she and I discovered that we are genetically related she popped up on my mother's DNA match list as a cousin and for about two and a half almost three years we have been looking for that connection and I had identified a possible slaveholding family in my history where I thought that connection was she actually discovered it using Freedmen's Bureau records and tribal enrollment records for I believe it was the Cherokee in Oklahoma and was able to discover that one of the descendants of one of my white ancestors married her ancestor who was well they're both her ancestor but I was related to this person and they were married in in Oklahoma in an interracial marriage in the 1870s which was really surprising but one of the things that I hear sometimes in it is it's a little bit sad is that sometimes someone will pop up on our DNA match list who doesn't look just like us and we immediately dismiss it as if well we can't possibly be related to them well you can just because I am a hundred percent European does not mean that I can't have a person of color as a genetic cousin because many of them are also mixed-race and so they are European and usually that's where we're going to find that connection so just be really sensitive to that if if you're if somebody reaches out to you maybe help provide them with some information or used your DNA match list as an opportunity to start to make some of these connections now what I've done is I've actually gone into my mother's match list and we have proven now Jeanette through genetics that Tobias Phillips is in fact the biological father of the two sons of Margaret Lawrence because he had children with his legal wife and his parents had other children and we are genetically connected to descendents of the other children and the and uncles so that there is a proven family connection there and the amount of shared DNA and and all the information that we've been able to put together it gives me a high degree of confidence that Tobias Phillips is in fact the father of the children of Margaret Lawrence so now what I am looking for is who is there anybody in there who is related to Tobias Phillips son George who was given the instructions to use the Negro wench for demur until she had been delivered of three children and my guess is what we're going to discover is descendants of those three children are genetically related to George and thus to Tobias and thus to us through the children of Margaret Lawrence I hope you were able to follow that family tree in the air and I'm still trying to put the pieces together so I don't have a family tree chart or something to show you on the screen but as I'm putting all of this evidence together I'm discovering a lot of really interesting things in the process okay so there are some things that you need to remember in this process and this is where I'll talk about where you can go to actually document information about them B I mean I'm documenting it right I've transcribed the will I've actually added four demur to my family tree and I'll show you what I'm gonna do with that here in just a minute so one of the things you need to remember is just because someone has the same surname does not mean they are part of the same family so if I come across somebody with the last name of Phillips living in Richmond Virginia in the 1700s who is black that does not mean that that person is necessarily a descendant of Tobias and/or George George Phillips okay they could be it is a possible clue and we need to kind of hold on to that but this is where additional evidence becomes so much more important also this the reverse is also true right just because somebody has a different name than the local family of white slaveholders as you come across somebody doesn't mean they're not related okay again they may have changed their name they may not have wanted to be sociated with the individual who was their slave holder and so they upon emancipation they may have chosen a name that has nothing to do with that family even though they may be part kinetically part of that family so keep that in mind another thing is if you have proof of a familial relationship add them to your tree okay so here is I'll show you what I did what I've done and then what I'm gonna do to change it and we'll walk through that I wanted to do this as an example so I've kind of left it the way it is here so one of the things that we learned from the will of Tobias Phillips is that he had a negro wench named for de mer and that he gave her to his son George so I've entered a for de mer here in in George's tree as a spouse no I fully recognize she is not his spouse if anything this was a non consensual relationship okay that produced offspring but I want to make sure that the families are tied together okay now some subsequent research I'm still trying to prove that she had these three children that were ascribed there may have been more actually or or less but I want to I still need to prove that so for the time being I need to sever this relationship until I can prove it so one of the one of the things you have to do in online trees is you add a relation in order to put somebody in your tree who is kind of floating you have to add them to someone okay you can't just add a random person in a tree because they have to be connected to the tree somehow but once they are connected to the tree I can actually come in here and I can edit relationships and I can now disconnect them so I haven't proven yet that George Phillips and for de mer his negro slave had children together and so I'm going I entered her but now I need to disconnect them and that allowed me to enter her and I'll show you what I'll do to keep track of that here and just a minute so now I'm going to X out of this relation so I'm going to I'm going to cancel this relationship so basically it's going to disconnect them and now I will have George in the tree connected to the tree and Fordham or will now be in my tree is kind of a floating entity until I figure out what her connection is specifically to this family so I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna remove that relationship okay so now she has no relationships in my tree for the time being and it's gonna refresh here there we go and now he does not show up here so she's still in my tree he's still in my tree but they are not connected any longer okay now what I'm going to do is I'm going to come find George Phillips in my tree and what I do know is that is that his father willed her to him so there is a connection at one point she was the property of Tobias and then she becomes the property of George so I want to make sure that I've got them connected and that she's not left floating out there in my tree that she's connected to this family until I can prove that she's got children who are connected to this family so under George here I have the opportunity to add web link and so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click add a web link and then what I can put in here is the URL of the profile page for for demur so I'm gonna go back here and find for Demark for demur and I'm going to go to her profile page and then I'm gonna copy the URL here of her profile page and then I'm going to paste it here and then under the link name I'm going to write for tumor and negro slave as the floor is the phrase that was used in Tobias's we'll which is why I've reflected that here so that that then shows up and now rather than showing up as his spouse which regardless of how look at it she was not she is showing up here as a connected or a linked person and I can just click that and it takes me directly to her her profile now of course I do still have some more research to do and if I discover that George did father children by Fordham er I will add her back as a spouse I'll change that relationship and you can do that under edit relationships and then list their children under there hopefully that all made sense okay but the idea is is that if you have proof of a familiar relationship add them as family if you do not have proof of a family relationship add them to the tree disconnect them from the individual and then make a web link so that you can keep track of these enslaved individuals we don't want to lose them that's I think that's just for me that sorry really emotional for me one of the reasons I do family history is because I don't want anybody to be forgotten and these are people who have been forgotten for far too long and so just saying their names just acknowledging that they have a place in our family history I think is important and so that's why I have to chosen to do this this way another thing that you can do and I would encourage you to do this and there are there's a group of bloggers who this just kind of grew out of something for Black History Month and this February in the United States is Black History Month and so this slave named role project kind of grew out of that they use a couple of hashtags one is hashtag free the names and you can if you want you have documented a particular individual you can submit them to the slave named role project now the easiest way to find that of course is to just google slave named role project the tangled roots and branches is the individual who is the name of the blog where these are showing up and you can submit names and you'll you can also search the names and you'll see here she hasn't broken out by state and then by county within that state and there are links to records wills petitions [Music] apprenticeship indenture ship records you know all sorts of different records that that document the names of these particular individuals and so that's a great resource to search to see if anybody else has done any research on your particular slave holding families it's also a great resource to be able to submit to to make that information more widely findable it will be found probably if it is in your tree online but it makes it more broadly findable and google searchable to add it to this particular project and so that's what I have chosen to do is those two things and documenting them in my tree as best I can and then I'm also submitting to the slave named role project so that those become readily searchable and findable well that is all I have prepared for you today I hope that this was useful I would love to hear your suggestions for ways in which you are making these discoveries and ways in which you were documenting these discoveries in your own family tree and let me just say again I am I love making these connections I love recognizing that that even though Tobias Phillips may have been a horrible human being because of him I am connected to some pretty amazing people and there are some some great opportunities for us to recognize our connections and to celebrate the goodness in spite of some of the horrible things that are in our history and you know there's a lot I can say about that but I'm pretty sure we're out of time so if you have any comments if you have any suggestions please leave them in the comments here on the YouTube channel I would love to continue this discussion and hopefully sometime soon I will be able to do a follow-up video about what I discover about for de mer and her children until next time this is Krista Cowen have fun climbing your family tree

Channel: Ancestry

Views: 28,026

Rating: 4.9326425 out of 5

Keywords: Ancestry, ancestry.com, genealogy, family history, AncestryDNA, Barefoot Genealogist, African American, Black, POC, People of Color, Slavery, Slaveholders

Id: URrn71yOQzY

Length: 35min 32sec (2132 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 28 2017