My name is Stacy Ashmore Cole. In 2017, I discovered eleven names in my 4th great-grandfather’s will that would change everything: Abram, Andrew, Edwin, Elitha, Sibby, Toney, Clayton, Sandy, Frank, Toby, and Saul. These were people my 4th great-grandfather John Ashmore held in slavery in 1841 Liberty County, Georgia.

What started as curiosity became something deeper when I began researching their lives. Using records from FamilySearch and Ancestry, I learned that Sibby was the mother of seven of them. I constructed detailed stories for Toby Ashmore and Andrew Law. Then I started reaching out to Ancestry users who had Toby Ashmore in their trees and found Charlie, Toby’s 2nd great-grandson.

When Charlie and I compared DNA, we discovered we were cousins. Toby—the only one to keep the Ashmore surname after Emancipation—had been enslaved by his own family.

This revelation opened my eyes to a troubling reality: while my family tree had practically assembled itself when I joined Ancestry, descendants of the people my ancestors enslaved faced far greater challenges reconstructing theirs.

The genealogy world had largely ignored them, reducing their ancestors to nameless property in will summaries and records.

I found John Ashmore’s will first mentioned in the 1960s Georgia Genealogical Magazine, where most enslaved people went unnamed—treated as footnotes to white family histories. I couldn’t stand the idea of all these people going unnamed in history.

So I started a small WordPress blog to publish complete will abstracts with every name included. When it came time to choose a title, I remembered something public historian Hermina Glass-Hill had said during our collaboration on Liberty County research: “They had names.”

That simple blog has grown into a website containing references to more than 40,000 named African Americans in Liberty County records from 1756 to 1900. It includes all the known wills, estate inventories and deed records naming African Americans between 1786 and 1865. 

In 2024, I realized through research into Flanders Pray, one of the first African American school teachers in Liberty County, how intertwined Liberty and Bryan Counties are. Flanders Pray”s family was held in slavery in Bryan County back at least to the early 1800s. I have now added all the Bryan County deed records naming African Americans from 1786 to 1865 to the website, over 3300 references. 

My goal is straightforward: ensure that descendants of people held in slavery in Liberty and Bryan Counties know their ancestors’ names, and that those ancestors are not forgotten.

I haven’t done this work alone. In 2019, the wonderful Cathy Dillon volunteered to help transcribe records, dedicating part of each day to the project through 2022. Though she has no connection to Liberty County, she believed in the mission. Cathy completed the Liberty County estate inventories from 1790-1865—adding more than 13,340 names of enslaved African Americans—and transcribed most of the Southern Claims Commission case files on the site.

What began with eleven names in an 1841 will has become something I never imagined: a digital monument to thousands of people whose names deserve to be known and remembered.