African-American research is a challenging topic, but in many cases this research can be successful. Basically, African-American genealogy proceeds in the same way (from today backward in time, one generation at a time) and with the same sources (censuses, family papers, county and town records, vital records, obituaries, etc.) as research on ancestors of other ethnic groups. The first step is to work your way back to the 1870 census and find your ancestral families in that record. For this step, see Unpuzzling Your Past and/or A Genealogist’s Guide to Discovering Your African-American Ancestors.

Then you have to choose one family on which to concentrate. At this time, you can determine whether that family may have been free or slave before 1865. If they lived in the South, or some places in the North, and if they were not enumerated in the 1860 census of the free population, they may well have been slaves. However, a number of free Americans (black and white) were missed in the 1860 enumeration. At some point before 1865, many—but not all—African Americans were slaves. In general, especially in the South, free black ancestors were likely to have lived in cities. City directories help pinpoint a family’s whereabouts but do not name all family members.

It sometimes works out that several of your families were on the same farm or plantation or in the same household before emancipation. You can’t go into research assuming that, but be alert to the possibility.

Make a list of the members of your focus family as you have discovered them in 1870 or years after that. Subtract back so that you have a list of family members who were probably alive in 1860; list their genders and ages. You will use this list to try to identify the slaveholder (below).

Surnames
First, let’s talk about surnames. During slavery, most slaves were known publicly by only a given name. When a surname was needed, clerks generally (but not always) assigned them the surname of the current slaveholder. Historians know now that many slave families used a surname privately—often a name that preserved some of their family history, such as the name of a parent or the name of an earlier slaveholder.

After attaining freedom, your ancestors needed surnames they could use in public records. Many did keep the surname of a former slaveholder—for example, the most recent, the longest, the kindest, or the earliest known in their family. Others chose surnames of famous people, famous nationally or locally. Others chose simply a name they liked or created a name that had personal or family significance. Be aware that sometimes family members chose different surnames. This practice can confuse a researcher, but if you are alert and study the family as a group, you can often pick up these changes.

Identifying the slaveholder in order to find your family
If you do not have a family tradition or family documents that name the slaveholder for your focus family, it is your task to identify him or her. You have to do this in order to find previous generations of slave ancestors.

You can start with the hypothesis that the family may have kept the last slaveholder’s surname. This is where you use your 1860 family list. You’ll have to know or estimate who in your family was alive in 1860 and about how old they were, based on your research, especially the 1870 census. Try to find white families with that same surname in the 1870 location and study them in the 1860 and 1850 free population censuses and slave schedules. If any of the white families were slaveholders (as shown in the slave census schedules), study their slave schedules to investigate whether your family might be among the slaves listed (by age and gender, but rarely by name) in that white household. (Be aware that, in some areas, slaveholders included American Indians or African Americans.)

If these same-surname families did not have slaves (check census and tax records) or your family did not seem to be among their slaves, you have to look elsewhere for your family’s slaveholder. Sometimes, the slaveholding family was related to the same-surname family—the wife’s family or another relative. This possibility may lead you to study the same-surname family in census, marriage, and probate records to determine any such connection.

If the same-surname approach does not identify your family’s slaveholder, you need to study the neighborhood where your family lived in 1870. Who were the nearest white families—those enumerated usually within three to five pages of your family in the 1870 census? Check these white families in the 1860 free and slave schedules. Did they hold slaves? Did the slaves in their household match your family members in gender and age? Usually mothers and children were together; slave fathers may or may not have lived on the same farm or in the same household as the rest of the family, but they may have been nearby.

Be aware, too, that sometimes family members died between censuses. Thus, you may not know all your family members who were living in 1860. However, you may know enough about your family to evaluate the slave households of the area and identify a group that matches what you know of your family.

If your family moved away during or shortly after the Civil War and were living elsewhere in 1870, you will need to try to determine where they lived prior to 1870. However, numerous freed slaves and former slaveholders stayed at or near their pre-war homes until at least 1870.

When you believe you have one or more candidates for your family’s slaveholder, study the candidate family in whatever records you can find, including family histories. Probate records are usually the best for identifying slaves in a household. However, if the slaveholder lived after the Civil War, the probate records, of course, will not name former slaves. In such a situation, other records, such as probate records of previous generations, may provide answers.

Remember, there is hope. Many slave ancestors can be identified. Everyone involved in Southern research faces challenges with burned courthouses and other loss of records. Be patient with yourself and in your research. It make take some time, but many ancestors can be found.

Other Resources
Both The Sleuth Book for Genealogists and The Genealogist’s Companion and Sourcebook, 2nd edition, contain a case study on researching slave ancestors. A number of case studies in A Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Your African-American Ancestors focus on different aspects of African-American research. The Genealogist’s Companion and Sourcebook is available from the publisher. The Sleuth Book and the African-American book are available from the author.

The December 2002 issue of Family Tree Magazine, pages 62–67, contains an article on this subject. You can read highlights online at www.familytreemagazine.com/articles/dec02/african.html.