Blog Posts
As I sift through the old records of Liberty County, Georgia, looking for documents that name enslaved and free African Americans, sometimes stories, important details, research tips, etc, jump out at me. This is a place to document those. Even if you are not researching Liberty County, these may give you ideas that apply to your own research elsewhere.
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New Feature! Index of Enslaved People Named in Estate Inventories
Imagine being easily able to find every single name of an enslaved person listed in Liberty County, Georgia, estate inventories from colonial times through Emancipation. No reading through thousands of pages of old, handwritten documents looking for a first name that might appear in many records. Downloadable PDFs containing abstracts of all the Liberty County estate inventories that name enslaved people have been available on They Had Names for a while but they didn’t previously
Heirs Property in Liberty County, Georgia
A recent article by Robin Kemp of The Current highlights the challenges descendants of Liberty County freedpeople face regarding heirs property. Documenting land ownership can be incredibly difficult when ancestors faced systemic obstacles in filing the proper paperwork. As Scott Wall, mapping supervisor for the Liberty County Tax Assessor’s Office, noted in the article, without the actual deeds of sale: “You need some bounds and descriptions… going back to the original when… wherever they got the property
Finding Your Liberty County Ancestors, 1865-1869
One of the most difficult parts of tracing freedpeople is finding information on them from before the 1870 federal census. Every piece of evidence from after the Civil War up to the 1870 census is valuable. A complicating factor is that surname usage among freedmen was not necessarily stable during this period and for some time afterward. Liberty County freedpeople have been found to “change” surnames between the 1870 and 1880 census. Differing surnames for
Silva and Charles Walthour
Silva Walthour was in her 70s in late 1864 when Sherman’s Army appeared at her Liberty County home on Raymond Cay Sr’s plantation and told her she was free. The first time she appeared in a U.S. federal census was in 1870. She was in a household on her own, with only 12-year-old Prince McIver, possibly a grandchild.[1] In the 1880 census, she was living in the household of Prince and Patsy Cumming, and was
Freedom and Foraging
The Bittersweet Arrival of Sherman’s Army in Liberty County In December 1864, as the holiday season approached, the reality of the Civil War marched directly into Liberty County. General Sherman’s Army had arrived, and they were desperate. The soldiers were starving, their horses were spent, and they had the full might of the Union behind them to take whatever they needed to survive. Foraging parties fanned out across the county, stripping the once-rich farms of
Daniel Bryant & the Screven Family
Daniel Bryant, a Liberty County freedman, sued the U.S. government in the 1870s for a mare and food taken from him by Sherman’s Army on their March to the Sea. The U.S. Southern Claims Commission was set up by Congress to compensate loyal Southerners for such items taken by the soldier. The Commission was not expecting freedpeople to make claims because they did not think they could own property. In coastal Georgia, though, enslaved people
Frances Brown
In 1873, Frances Brown, a formerly enslaved woman, successfully sued the U.S. government under the U.S. Southern Claims Commission for restitution for poultry, hogs, rice, corn, and clothing/quilts taken from her by Sherman’s Army when they came foraging in Liberty County, Georgia, in December 1864. She was allowed $77 of her $145 claim, roughly about $2000 in today’s dollars.[1] For a full transcription of this claim, see https://theyhadnames.net/2025/11/11/frances-brown-southern-claims-commission/. These claims present a gold mine of
When Charity Has a Past: The John Lambert Estate and the Legacy of Slavery
A man who died in 1786 in Liberty County, Georgia, established a charitable fund that still – more than two centuries later – distributes funds derived from the labor and sale of enslaved people to local educational, historical, and philanthropic causes. John Lambert and Establishment of the John Lambert Estate In 1784, John Lambert, a planter from South Carolina, bought land in Liberty County in the vicinity of the historic Midway Congregational Church. The Church
Podcast Episode Featuring They Had Names
I had the pleasure today of talking with Bernice Bennett about the They Had Names project on her podcast Ancestors’ Footprints! If you’re not familiar with the podcast, it started some years ago as Research at the National Archives and Beyond. It had a short hiatus, then restarted as Ancestors’ Footprints. She features interviews with genealogists, mostly about African American genealogy and history. It’s a wonderful podcast and I’m a big fan. We talked about
New Download! Bryan County, Georgia
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