The They Had Names website is normally dedicated to Liberty County, Georgia, records. However, Bryan County neighbors Liberty County on the Georgia coast and throughout its history, there has been overlap in the population. Some people enslaved in Bryan County wound up in Liberty County, and vice versa. While Liberty County is rich in antebellum records, most antebellum records for Bryan County no longer exist.
The shining exception is the Bryan County Superior Court deed records, which name enslaved people in bills of sale, deeds of gift, marriage settlements, chattel mortgages, and occasionally estate inventories and wills. These records can be found on both Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. I have read through all these deed records starting from 1795 through 1865 (Deed Books A-G), and created abstracts of any deeds that name enslaved people—3352 references to named enslaved people.
Now you can download a free, fully indexed, PDF containing all these abstracts, as part of They Had Names’ initiative to create free, downloadable books of all its content.
Also available are PDFs of all the Liberty County estate inventories naming enslaved people.
Find them all here: https://theyhadnames.net/downloadable-files/
Use these as you need them: in your own research, for client work, or as reference for institutions. Just don’t sell the files!
I’m currently prioritizing data preservation over new research, but I’m maintaining a list of requests and haven’t forgotten anyone.