In this second episode in our Dawn of a New Decade series, learn the ins and outs of the first two census sets of the 20th century and the gems within to unearth more research finds!
Click here to watch episode 109
Previous Episodes of Interest:
- Researching Enslaved Ancestors Playlist
- Ep 19: North and South Carolina Genealogy Research
- Ep 36: Get to MY Folks: Easy Ways to Find People of Color in Online Records
- Ep 105: Tracing the Trade: Slavery in Louisiana and Mississippi
North Carolina and South Carolina split in 1729; 110 years after 1619, 47 years before the founding of the United States.
North Carolina
- “After the Carolinas officially split in 1729, North Carolina had 6,000 slaves compared to South Carolina’s 32,000.”
- “Many owners in North Carolina purchased their slaves via overland routes from South Carolina, Georgia, and the Chesapeake region.”
- There was a lot of back and forth regarding the legality of importing African people prior to 1800. “In 1816 North Carolina and several other states passed the Act to Dispose of Illegally Imported Slaves, opting to sell all slaves who had been imported after 1808 with the proceeds benefiting the state treasury.”
- This is a set of records that many people may not be privy to searching to find their Middle Passage ancestors
- “Between 1810 and 1820, 137,000 slaves were sent from the Chesapeake states and North Carolina to Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.”
South Carolina
- “Africans were imported in significant numbers from about the 1690s, and by 1715 the black population made up about sixty percent of the colony’s total population. South Carolina was the only colony in English North America where the Black population made up 60% of the total population.”
- “The majority of the local trade in South Carolina was ordered by the courts (these records are not digitized)”
- “Once an enslaved person was caught up in the slave trade, their chances of being sold multiple times increased exponentially”
- “Overall in estate sales, slave traders accounted for 12-14% of the purchasers. [see resource link below for Charleston’s Weeping Time]. Several bought only children without parents.”
- “Lowcountry South Carolina was distinguished by the task system of labor organization, which allowed slaves time to work for themselves after completion of their daily assignments and permitted some to accumulate property.” Louisiana had a similar system.
Main Sources of Information:
- Courthouse
- Local Libraries and Repositories
- South Carolina State Archives
- North Carolina State Archives
- FamilySearch Catalog
- FamilySearch – South Carolina Probate Records, Bound Volumes, 1671-1977 (wills, estate returns) (“Estate returns exist for 1835-1865 and often document the sale of enslaved people not documented in the bills of sale collection”)
- FamilySearch – South Carolina Probate Records, Files and Loose Papers, 1732-1964 (estate inventories) (“Estate inventories volumes often contain accounts of the sales of enslaved families as directed in the deceased’s will. Interstate slave traders account for approximately 14% of purchasers from estates”)
- Personal papers, special collections, universities
- County history books
- Fold3 – South Carolina Estate Inventories and Bills of Sale, 1732-1872
- Ancestry – South Carolina, Wills and Probate Records, 1670-1980
- Ancestry – Edgefield, South Carolina, Slave Records, 1774-1866
- FamilySearch – South Carolina, Charleston District, Bill of sales of Negro slaves, 1774-1872
- Digital Library on American Slavery – Race and Slavery Petitions Project NC Runaway Slave Advertisements (Nationwide records); People Not Property – “People Not Property – Slave Deeds of North Carolina is a new, collaborative endeavor between the UNCG University Libraries, North Carolina Division of Archives and Records, and North Carolina Registers of Deeds among others. Funded through a generous NHPRC grant from the National Archives, the project is leading towards a unique, centralized database of bills of sales indexing the names of enslaved people from across North Carolina. Until completed, we aggregate and link to the individual efforts of several counties. More information on each of these local efforts may be found on the About DLAS page.”
- Emory University, Slave Voyages
- FREE AFRICAN AMERICANS OF VIRGINIA, NORTH CAROLINA, SOUTH CAROLINA, MARYLAND AND DELAWARE, by Paul Heinegg
- Hathi Trust
- Hein Online
- Digital Public Library of America
- WPA Federal Writer’s Project: Slave Narrative Project
- Documenting the American South
- Project Muse
Episode Resource Content:
- Slavery in North Carolina
- Slavery in South Carolina
- Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders and Slaves in the Old South, by Michael Tadman
- Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life, by Steven Deyle
- Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, by Walter Johnson
- Slave Trading in the Old South, by Frederic Bancroft
- Saint Dominguan Refugees in Charleston, South Carolina, 1791-1822: Assimilation and Accommodation in a Slave Society, by Margaret Wilson Gillikin
- Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South, by Kenneth M. Stampp
- Slavery and Servitude in the Colony of North Carolina, John Spencer Bassett
- Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina, by Daniel C. Littlefield
Additional Resources