I’m still working my way through the Liberty County antebellum census records as I create a list of all slaveowners documented in Liberty County. I’m almost done with the 1830 census and don’t think I had ever noticed that there was a list of free people of color by name at the end of the census. This census was not by district. There were few enough white heads of household at that time that they

Hurricane Idalia and some volunteer work for the Georgia Genealogical Society briefly stalled work on They Had Names so no progress this week. I did add a section to the site with tips for searches. Did you know that you can narrow your search to just the name you’re looking for? For example, let’s say you’ve discovered that Richard Baker was the enslaver of your ancestor. If you enter Richard Baker into the site search

I’ve returned to building the list of Liberty County slaveowners, which now has more than 500 names. I’ve finished the 1860, 1850, and 1840 census records and am in the middle of the 1830 census, which has the infamous “tick” marks that I have to enter manually into the spreadsheet. I’m creating and building out trees for the slaveowners to be able to see the ways in which enslaved people entered their control through marriage

Progress on Projects I’m still chipping away at detangling the many Simon Frasers of the early 19th century in Liberty County. Using the bedrock genealogy principle of “reasonably exhaustive research” set me to reading each of the Liberty County Superior Court deed records in the Fraser part of the index. Doing that in the Fraser part of the Court of Ordinary loose papers led me to the document I mentioned last time in which a

I’ve been going through the loose papers in the Estate Files of the Liberty County Court of Ordinary (online at FamilySearch and Ancestry) looking for more information about the multiple slaveowner Simon Frasers of Liberty County. I had documented three such men, and have now found a fourth. It’s been a good lesson in not ignoring anomalous data. There is a headstone at the Midway Church cemetery for a Simon Fraser bearing the death year

Progress on Projects No real progress this week on the website because I was in a full-time class (virtually) at the Institute of Genealogy & Historical Research (IGHR). The class was “Building an African American Research Toolbox” with instructor Tim Pinnick (and we were fortunate enough to have Dr. Deborah Abbott in the class also!). Tim shared his knowledge about finding research materials in academic libraries and I learned so much. We covered historical books,

I had planned to have finished detangling the slaveowner Simon Frasers of Liberty County by now. I’ve identified three: Simon Fraser 1 (-1812) Simon Fraser 2 (1797-1856) (son of the above) Simon Fraser 3 (1816-1870) (son of William Fraser) Everything was fitting together nicely until I decided to search through the Liberty County Superior Court loose papers online, where I found one Simon Fraser’s 1835 application for U.S. citizenship, saying he’d been in Liberty County

I finally finished paging through the Liberty County Superior Court Minutes for 1804-1821! The exclamation point is because it was one of the more tedious projects. Those Liberty County planters spent an awful lot of time suing each other or being sued for debt. There were 653 images, with two pages each, in the record set, and I was only able to find 35 cases that named enslaved people but every little bit helps. The

I’ve added a “Recent Additions” item to the website menu for people who dip in now and again to check on their ancestors. Court Cases Naming Enslaved People I’m continuing to read the Liberty County Superior Court “Minutes” and “Proceedings” page by page, looking for mentions of enslaved people.  The ratio of “pages read” to “cases found” is a little depressing, but when I find them, they tend to be very interesting. Have you heard

Using the knowledge that most freed people in Liberty County did not take the surname of their last enslaver, and that many adopted a surname that may have come from an early enslaver of their family, it was possible to find the enslaved great-grandparents of Elisha James, who lived in Liberty County in the latter part of the 19th century. His great-grandparents Will and Nancy, and his grandfather Shuel Holmes, were held in slavery by