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Genealogy Resources on the Internet--Almost All Free!

  
 

Tips for Getting Started
(Introduction, with links to other sites with tips!)

Start by interviewing your living ancestors (the Oral History Form might help with the interviewing. If your living ancestors (parents, grandparents, great grandparents) are not 100% sure of where or when they were born, it is possible that this information is given in their marriage application--all you need to know is when and where they were married, then order the license, then the application![1] From there, you may be able to check their birth certificates for their parents' birth places and ages. (Please note that births were not recorded in all states--Georgia is one such state--in the early nineteenth century, and so you may have trouble getting birth certificates from some states for births before the Civil War or even before 1900.)

A great place to look next is on one of the censuses, such as the 1880 census[2]--that census (like later censuses available) lists each person's approximate age, relation to the household head, place of birth, and place of parents' births! The 1890 census is available but in fragmented form (most of it was burnt). Censuses from 1900 on provide a birth date (Month, day, year) but this information may not always be completely accurate (the singing of "Happy Birthday did not start till 1910!; see Shirley Cherkasky, May, 2000; rpt. online at http://www.chowdc.org/Papers/Cherkasky2000.html). The 1920 and 1930 censuses also provide information about both occupation and industry!

From here you can try to locate your ancestors in earlier censuses.[3] You may also wish to look to see if there are Wills mentioning possible ancestors.

Links on How-To Research

Tips for Getting Started
(Introduction, with links to other sites with tips!)
Roots Web's U.S. Archives
(Databases and Search Engines, with links to Ancestry.com at the Fort Worth Library; also Roots Web Maps, Tips)
National Records Archive (NARA)
(The Research Room, The Freedmen's Bureau Records, Native American Enrollment Lists, and Military Records)
SouthEast Genealogy Maps
(Maps Showing Areas Censused, and County Formation)
Other Online Resources
(List of Slaves--primarily from Wills, Surname Tracking, Louisiana Slave Records, a link to Alex Haley's Family Tree, and . . . what about DNA?)
Sites With Collections of Links to Other Resources
(Collections of Links on Genealogy; some include ways families have told their stories)
Off-line Resources
(Books--history, genealogies, how-to)
p align="left" id="RootsWeb"> Roots Web's U.S. Archives
(Databases and Search Engines, with links to Ancestry.com at the Fort Worth Library; also Roots Web Maps, Tips)

  • http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/To search these archives, select the state of interest in the index, then look through the folders of documents offered. Wills are great to find, though not many are posted! Among the information you may find in wills are the first names of slaves, who may be "willed" to one or another descendant of the person writing the will; names of people to be freed are sometimes also listed!
    Occasionally a legal document "manumitting" a slave may be included in the U.S. gen web archives! (This is the case for Burke County, Georgia.) Another good place to look is a county's marriage records (in the vital records folder in the individual counties)--or at http://usgwarchives.net/marriages/ In Southern states, marriages of persons considered Black are generally not listed before 1860--although you may find some Freedmen's marriages listed in the early 1800's. From 1860 on, these marriages may be indexed under "colored marriages."

  • http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/newsearch.htm Use this link to search for a name (select a state too), or to search by keyword. The second option, the "Keyword Search," allows you to do a "boolean" search, and thus to include several names that might appear together in a Will or marriage document in the archives. To do a boolean search, under "Match," select "boolean." Then, under "Keyword" type the name of the first person you are searching for, followed by "AND," then the name of the second person. If you like you can use only a first name or last name for each. Thus, if you are looking for a person named "Sally" who might have been mentioned in the will of a person surnamed "Johnson," just type "Sally AND Johnson." You can leave the state unselected for the "Keyword Search." (Leaving off the state sometimes a good idea; for example I had relatives living in Georgia who were trying to claim an unclaimed Revolutionary War land bounty; searching in Georgia brought up nothing--because the land bounty was in the state of Virginia! Other times, leaving off the state will bring up pages of unrelated data!)


  • http://searches.rootsweb.com/htdig/search.html Use this link to search for a name nationwide. Beware, you may get lots more listings than you can sort through.

  • Searching for African Americans in the roots web U. S. Genweb Archives: this is done different ways in different states.
    For Georgia, go to the Georgia Table of Contents Page (http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htma>, and enter in the Search text box the words "Slave schedules"!
    For Louisiana, there is a link to     African American Files (http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/la/afamer.htm) at the Louisiana Table of Contents Page (http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/la/lafiles.htm)!

  • http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/census/
    Search the U.S. census! Though the census started in 1790, only heads of households were given then. And the census only started in these years in the original thirteen colonies, with Georgia's census being pretty sketchy as Georgia had much land to acquire yet in treaties with Indians. Other household members were simply enumerated as slave or free, White, Colored, or Black, male or female, within a particular age category.
    By 1850, names of heads of households were listed with all free household members. Unfree household members were still enumerated without names.
    By 1870 everyone's name was listed along with an occupation (for children who were not working, that might be "in school" or "at home") and by 1880 the census also listed the relationship between every person on a census to the head of the household that person was listed under. Unfortunately though, the best list of censuses is not free, but for pay, at ancestry.com--however these are available free in the Fort Worth library! (Go to the Fort Worth Library Home page; click on "Online Databases," click on "History and Genealogy," and then click on "Ancestry Library Edition." Alternately, go directly to "History and Genealogy" using this link and click on "Ancestry Library Edition"! (Unfortunately, some ancestry images for some years may have the part listing the slaves cut off--whether that is ancestry's decision or the U.S. census suppliers' I cannot say; complete slave schedules are available for the year 1850, and that is probably where to start once you determine what last names you are looking for and what counties you are looking in--by taking a family history and searching through ancestors in the 1880 census and also in lists of marriages for the various states--which were recorded generally before births were registered.)
    To search through the census, you need to know the county an ancestor lived in (see map links below). Some years may not be available in some states, as the gen web is looking still for volunteers to transcribe these!
    Go to: http://www.rootsweb.com/~census/, if you want to transcribe! If you do not have access to a copy or image of a census to transcribe (the ones at ancestry.com--http://www.ancestry.com--a data base you have to pay for if it is not available through your library--it is available through Fort Worth's library; see above--are fine for transcribing), you can still become a second reader of someone else's transcription!

  • http://www.rootsweb.com/~caribgw/cgw_archive/na/rodney1.txt The Rodney Rolls, 1781, from the Caribbean Antilles, part of the Caribean GenWeb Project, this population list identifies households with slaves (many slaves came to the U.S. by way of the Caribbean)

  • http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/maps/ Here you can research Indian land cessions by treaty--click on Indian Land Cessions to the United States Treaty Maps; and look up the treaty # of a region to see what land was ceded when--there will be scant U.S. records for a region before it was ceded to the U.S--though settlers were living there of course--that's why the Indians ceded the land; people wanted it.
    Also, check out the State and County Maps link here to see what counties are near a county--as some counties were subdivided later so earlier records or later records for the same place are in different counties; also since some county records have been burned or lost it helps to do an exhaustive search of nearby counties for any that might pop up in them.

  • http://www.rootsweb.com/~rwguide/lesson29.htm Roots Web's guide to using information from land resources to locate ancestors. In the early days, not only Southern planters but many whites are listed in these records as well as some minorities; today, less than half the population owns land but the resources still can be valuable. These records can locate a plantation, industry where someone worked, or neighborhood landmark perhaps, as well as land mentioned in Wills and other documents.

  • http://userdb.rootsweb.com/colored/ Roots Web's New Colored Records--not much here except a few Pennsylvania records, but it would be great if you shared your records with Roots Web; the more people who share records with Roots Web, the more records in Roots Web.

National Records Archive (NARA)--Genealogy Research Room
(The Research Room, The Freedmen's Bureau Records, Native American Enrollment Lists, and Military Records)

SouthEast Genealogy Maps
(Maps Showing Areas Censued, and County Formation)

  • SE Genealogy.com's County Census Maps for Texas-- These maps show what counties were censused in what years, and where people lived who were censused in a particular county! (The maps at this link are for Texas; to look in another state, click on that state in the menu for Other States in the left margin--that will take you to the new state; you should then click on that state's "Census Maps" [you may have to click on its maps first] in the menu on the left.
    If you have any trouble finding the maps for a particular state, try this:
    1. go back to the link http://www.mytexasgenealogy.com/tx_maps/tx_cm.htm
    2. change "texas" in "mytexasgenealogy" to the name of the state whose maps you want!
    3. now change the abbreviations for "Texas," the "tx" in "tx_maps" and the "tx" in "tx_cm" to the correct two-letter abbreviation for the state whose mapes you want!
      For example, to get the maps for Virginia, you would change "mytexasgenealogy.com" to "myvirginiagenealogy.com" and "tx_maps" to "va_maps" and "tx_cm" to "va_cm" so that the URL would become:
      http://www.myvirginiagenealogy.com/va_maps/va_cm.htm
    4. Now just click to go to the proper URL!
    )

  • SE Genealogy.com's County Formation Maps for Texas-- Since records may be kept in several counties it is important to check the county formation maps to see what the county name was when your ancestors lived there--and what counties it ultimately broke into (and with which its records--including those pertaining to your family--could have ended up being stored!). You want to follow the country formation from the date your ancestors lived there. (Again, the maps at this link are for Texas; so you'll need to go to the appropriate state, and then click on its "County Maps" in the menu on the left; again, if you have problems finding the maps for a particular state, just go to the Texas maps at http://www.mytexasgenealogy.com/tx_maps/tx_cf.htm and change the state name and abbreviations to the name and abbreviations for the state whose maps you want!)

Other Online Resources
(List of Slaves--primarily from Wills, Surname Tracking, Louisiana Slave Records, a link to Alex Haley's Family Tree, and . . . what about DNA?)

  • ftp://members.aol.com/slavedata/Public/ Index of ftp://members.aol.com/slavedata/Public (An amazing lists of slaves--by last name of owner generally--mostly taken from wills!)
  • http://www.afrigeneas.com/slavedata/ (Afrigeneas's African American Slave Data: This seems to be essentially the same collection of Wills, Inventories, and other records that is listed above; again it is indexed by surname.)
  • http://www.afrigeneas.com/surnames/ --Afrigeneas's African American Surnames: this site lists mainly the names of people collecting data on specific surnames.
    Surnames may often be derived from the names of the plantation owner, as slaves often just went by first name. Thus, the person tracking these has to track the movements of slaves through the plantations--through sales and wills, and through the marriages of the planters' families as well as through those of slaves themselves. The person also must track information about persons freed who have this name--persons who served in wars could be freed, or living among the Indians. You can email with specific questions about the names' histories, but also be sure to email these people when you encounter information about a surname--through a will, a document stating that someone was freed, or whatever. Don't send information that is important only to you and your cousins, of course--send that to your cousins!

  • http://www.searchforancestors.com/quicksearch/--this site lets you to search for a surname in a variety of databases, including those at Roots Web (which are free) and those at ancestry.com (which are not free but which the Fort Worth library subscribes to)

  • http://www.african-nativeamerican.com/ A good place to see some African-Indian Surnames!

  • http://www.ibiblio.org/laslave/index.html Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy. Created out of the research of Dr. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, now professor emerita of history at Rutgers. If you have ancestors from Louisiana, this very searchable site has documents about slaves from the time when Louisiana was French! Go to the search page (from the main page go to the [Introduction] then to [Search the Database]; you may also want to check out [How to Search], and fill out the form as completely as you can; feel free to leave some blanks.
    If you opt to [View Original Documents], they are in French, sometimes with elements of "Middle French" (French as spoken in the past). Click on the documents to enlarge them. Also check out the guide for deciphering the text in the originals below!

  • http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/treasures/contents.html Texas Treasures includes some Texas State archives online (many letters and historical documents; also at least one or two slave documents

  • http://www.kintehaley.org/ Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Foundation Check out the Haley Family Tree (but it downloads slowly) and also the resources sites indexed under Genealogy.

  • http://www.africanancestry.com/ This is not a free resource, at last! African Ancestry offers DNA testing for folks who may have hit a brick wall using more traditional resources. It tests for the father's father's father . . . by checking the Y chromosome DNA (since only men have this chromosome, only men can get this test), and supposedly also the mother's mother's mother . . . as far back as can be done, by checking the mitochondrial DNA. (One news article I read said it might be possible for men to pass on mitochondrial DNA, too, however--Tallahassee Democrat, 2003. I am not sure whether both sexes can take the mitochondrial DNA test or only women; if both sexes can take this test, then men must have this DNA!!!)
    Problems with this DNA test include:
    (1), you have many other ancestors besides your father's father's father's & so on, and your mother's mother's mother's!; (2), the test does not indicate how long ago your ancestors split off from groups with similar Y chromosome ormitochondrial DNA, nor can they be sure without testing DNA from the world over that the DNA they link to Africa is not also found in some other place besides Africa. And the African peoples have migrated like others, so the geographic location of the DNA in Africa today may or may not be the same place that your ancestors lived in. Finally, the one specific ancestor this test tests for may not have been from Africa, even if all other ancestors are.
    What can the test do?
    It may give you an area to start researching with hopes of finding some story or ship's record to link to your ancestor, but working forwards in time from a vague location and possible tribal identity to your known ancestors is probably going to be difficult. Is it worth several hundred bucks? I do not know. I would suggest you read first Bolnick (2003), "Showing Who They Really Are": Commercial Ventures in Genetic Genealogy (http://shrn.stanford.edu/workshops/revisitingrace/Bolnick2003.doc.) (you can find an HTML version of this document at google.com).

Sites With Collections of Links to Other Resources
(Collections of Links on Genealogy; some include ways families have told their stories)

Off-line Resources
(Books--history, genealogies, how-to)

  • Lane, Mills. Masters and Slaves. 3 in The People of Georgia. Savannah, Georgia: The Beehive Press.
    This book contains many photos of slaves, slave housing, and plantations, especially photos from the 50's. It also contains photos of cotton mills, where some slaves were hired out, and mentions the names of a few slaves (a fugitive, William Ball), and planters.

  • Ball, Charles. (1998). Slaves in the Family. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
    This book contains research into the lineage of the Ball slaves. The Balls were one of the great South Carolina slave holders before the Civil War.

  • Fears, Mary L. Jackson. (1995). Slave Ancestral Research: It's Something Else. Bowie, Maryland: Heritage Books.
    This is an excellent story of one woman's very exhaustive search for her ancestors' records--which led her to the woman from whom she inherited her middle name, who was born around 1780. In the process, she has looked at records of several families--and if you have ancestors from Georgia, you may just find a name among these, but this book is best as a "how to" book. Of course, Ms. Jackson Fears not only got microfilms of records, but actually travelled as far as the Washington, D. C. archives to do some of her digging! If you can't travel, you may find a librarian who can help you with getting microfilms of some records.
 
Notes
  1. Some marriage licenses available are listed online at ancestry.com.
  2. To locate an ancestor on the 1880 census, you will need to know what county to look in; if you know the name of the town and state, you may be able to locate the county on the maps at mapquest. Or try SE Genealogy's County Census and County Formation Maps (linked to above).
    (If you are having trouble trying to decide where someone lived in 1880, you might try first a later census--1890-1930 are available--and try to work backward. Of course, information about place of birth and parents' places of birth may 'change' slightly from census to census--and you'll have to try to sort out fact from fiction.) Since ancestry.com allows you to do a "ranked" search for your ancestors, you may be able to search for them without knowing the exact county they lived in. You'll also want to check the county census maps for the year(s) your ancestors lived in a particular area, as well as check county formation maps showing the formation of counties where your ancestors lived.
  3. Places to start looking for information about ancestors before 1880 include the 1870, 1860, and 1850 censuses. No individuals--except for heads of households--are listed by name in any U.S. census taken before 1850--all you can get is information about gender, presumed race, and approximate age. Slaves are not listed by name in the 1850 or 1860 census, but complete lists of slaves by age and gender are listed in the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules. Wills left by persons with the same last name are another place to look for information, as are oral histories of persons interviewed during the Great Depression at American Memory (online). Additional oral histories are at Documenting the American South (online). The last name taken by a person who was a slave could have been either that of the owner of a plantation on which that person lived or that of a parent. It may be possible that some persons sometimes used one name and sometimes another.
    Databases online at ancestry.com (which you can access through the Fort Worth library) that might be helpful include:
    • Freedmen Bureau Records of Field Offices, 1865-1872
    • 1850 U.S. Federal Census - Slave Schedules
      (also check out the 1850 Census Slave Schedules)
    • U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900
      (look for marriages just after 1860)
    • U.S. Colored Troops Military Service Records, 1861-1865
      (but note that all that is listed in this last database is the soldier's name and the location of the division served in!)
  4. Deciphering the Original French Documents: typical phrases plus translations; notes in brackets indicate the kind of information that goes in the preceding blank.
    • une Negresse: a Negress
    • un Negrillon: a Negro
    • nommée ____________ [name here; for women]: named ____________
    • nommé ____________ [name here; for men]: named ____________
    • ____________ [profession here] de profession: ____________ by trade
    • ____________ [race here] de la ____________ [country where brought from; often one in the Caribbean]: ____________ from the ____________
    • nation ____________ [country of origin here]: nation ____________
    • agée de ____________ [age in years here, for a woman, age written out in French; check out wordreference.com for translations of numbers] ans: aged ____________ years
    • agé de ____________ [age in years here, for a man] ans: aged ____________ years
    • une ____________ [profession/trade here; for women; such as "cuisinière," 'cook;' again wordreference.com may help translate the trades;]: a ____________
    • un ____________ [profession/trade here; "un" is masculine so this will be a man's trade]: a ____________
    • estimée à ____________ [price in piastres; for a woman] piastres: estimated at ____________ piastres
    • et son enfans [name of child follows]: and her child
  
 
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