SLAVERY PROBATE, DEED & Court records
Finding enslaved ancestors in slavery records can be very difficult because generally only first names are given in slaveowner wills, estate inventories, deed and court records. Reading every handwritten document for mention of a perhaps common first name is time-consuming and emotionally fraught.
They Had Names is designed to make this process easier by providing searchable abstracts or transcripts of every Liberty County will, estate inventory, and deed record that named enslaved people.
Old handwriting is hard to read! This site provides the abstracts and transcripts so you don’t have to browse all those old documents BUT each record has a link to the original record on FamilySearch.org or Ancestry.com. Please check it, as mistakes can be made.
this slavery database includes...
– Wills with more than 1220 names of enslaved people (1790-1865)
-670+ estate inventories and divisions with more than 17,300 names (1786-1865)
-35 colonial-era estate inventories (541 names) and wills (177 names) (1762-1775)
– Superior Court deed records (bills of sale, mortgages, marriage contracts, gift deeds) with 12,700+ names (1777-1783, 1785-1865)
-Superior Court court cases naming enslaved people
find the enslaver
Looking for a particular slaveowner’s will and/or estate inventory?
search the database
Proceed below if you don’t know the slaveowner’s name and/or want to search all the slavery records for a particular name, for example. All words in these abstracts and transcripts are searchable, so search for a name, place, plantation name, etc. You can narrow the search by category or leave it general. Be sure to try variant spellings.
Lists
Lists are also useful because they provide context.
- A list of 1151 African Americans – enslaved and free – who attended churches in Liberty County’s 15th District in 1846
- African American members of antebellum churches, including 3889 references to African American members of the Midway Church, 1756-1864
- 1850 mortality schedule
- A list of free persons of color, 1852-1865
The categories listed in the Category Filter above include:
–Deed Records: Bills of Sale, Deeds of Gift, Chattel Mortgages (enslaved people used as collateral), Marriage Settlements/Contracts
–Court Records: Legal cases involving enslaved people
–Probate: Wills, Estate Inventories, Estate Divisions, Estate Accounting, Estate Settlements
This seach is not able to distinguish between the names of enslaved people and the enslavers at the moment (stay tuned!). So if you search for “Charles,” you will find every mention of the name Charles. You can use the categories below to filter the query so it’s not so overwhelming or leave all unchecked to search all antebellum records. The number in parentheses beside each record type will show you how many results there were.