More and more, I have been realizing that there are many freed people in the Liberty County 1870 census whose surnames almost certainly come from early enslavers of their families who left Liberty County or died by the 1830s. I am working on a comprehensive list of Liberty County slaveowners over time that will allow descendants of enslaved people to easily “hook” their post-1870 family research into pre-Emancipation slavery documentation, but in the meantime, I’m also working on documenting these enslaving families whose surnames died out in Liberty County but resurfaced in the 1870s as the surnames of freed people. I’ve been speculating that this might have been because they were “absorbed” into much larger plantations and were known by those surnames as a way to distinguish among people of the same first name and to distinguish families.
I’ve written up two examples of these pre-1830s enslaving families.
https://theyhadnames.net/2023/05/25/slaveowner-series-william-ward/
https://theyhadnames.net/2023/05/26/slaveowner-series-james-james/
Also on the website is this study of Jacob Dryer, a freedman whose last enslaver was George W. Walthour. It turns out that Dryer’s surname came from Nathan Dryer, who died around 1808. Dryer’s widow had brought Jacob’s ancestors into the marriage, then took them with her when she married William Ward, whose last widow sold them to Walthour. This study shows how a freedman’s lineage can be documented back to his enslaved grandparents using these tangled white slaveowner relationships.
https://theyhadnames.net/2023/05/17/family-lineage-of-jacob-dryer/
More to come…
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