Ancestry Academy  > Education  >  Researching the Enslaved

 

Nicka Sewell-Smith, a senior story producer at Ancestry, delves into the complexities of researching enslaved ancestors. She begins by clarifying the session's intermediate level, advising new participants to start with her previous session on researching African-American ancestors. Nicka emphasizes the use of Ancestry's resources, particularly the ancestry.com/blackhistory guide, as a comprehensive source for records and tools available to African-American researchers. Nicka underscores the importance of tracing family history back to at least 1865, the year marking the end of the Civil War and formal slavery in the U.S., as it delivers crucial insights into ancestors who were either enslaved or free people of color prior to emancipation.

Nicka addresses the challenges and misconceptions surrounding oral history and its vital role in genealogy. She advises engaging with family stories cautiously yet earnestly, using them as leads rather than infallible facts. By doing so, researchers might discover valuable information otherwise not found in official records, such as land ownership histories or employer relationships between former enslavers and their now-freed employees. Moreover, she urges researchers to consider various manumission and emancipation methods—whether through wills, legal documents, or gradual emancipations in northern states—to determine how ancestors attained freedom.

The webinar further explores ancestral tracing using diverse records and strategies. Nicka highlights the significance of the 1870 census as the first to list African-Americans by name and details how other resources like the Freedman’s Bureau and Freedman’s Bank records, Civil War documents, and marriage records can aid discoveries. She stresses the necessity of documenting family trees, including potential connections to slaveholding families to unravel complex backgrounds and relationships within family histories. Similarly, she encourages using Ancestry's DNA tools, particularly "DNA Journeys," to pinpoint specific ancestral origins and patterns that illuminate familial connections.

Nicka shares convincing examples, like her own family history research involving newspapers from the time that mentioned formerly enslaved ancestors, thereby connecting them to their historical contexts and past owners. This search led to invaluable discoveries about land transactions post-emancipation and narrative verifications from Civil War pension records. Moreover, she emphasizes alternatives such as the WPA Slave Narratives and specific resources like the Louisiana Archives to gain multifaceted views of ancestors’ lives before, during, and after slavery.

In addressing participants’ queries, Nicka gives practical advice on navigating complex family histories where documentation may be sparse or fragmented. She advises patience and persistence in aligning DNA matches with historical records and suggests building comprehensive family trees that include both enslaved ancestors and slaveholding families. By fostering a connected research community, Nicka not only empowers viewers with research strategies but also instills confidence that with the right tools and approach, uncovering the histories of enslaved ancestors is an attainable and meaningful journey.