Why They Had Names Is Free
They Had Names is an independent, self-funded historical research project. Its purpose is to make records concerning enslaved and formerly enslaved people in Liberty and Bryan Counties, Georgia, easier for descendants and other researchers to find and use.
I do not charge for access to this site or its data, and I do not accept payment for genealogical research performed in connection with They Had Names. I believe descendants should be able to find information about their ancestors without having to pay for access to research that I have chosen to make freely available.
What You Are Welcome to Do
You are welcome to use information from They Had Names for personal genealogy, family history, historical research, education, scholarship, and other noncommercial purposes.
You may link to They Had Names, cite the site in your research, quote reasonable portions of its abstracts, transcripts and articles with attribution, and share individual records or information with descendants and other researchers.
When practical, please credit They Had Names (theyhadnames.net) and link to the relevant page so that others can examine the record, sources, and any later corrections for themselves.
Commercial Use
Materials created for They Had Names are made freely available for research and educational purposes. They may not be copied, republished, aggregated, incorporated into another database or dataset, or otherwise reused for a commercial purpose without prior written permission.
Commercial use includes, but is not limited to, using They Had Names materials in products or services that are sold, licensed, offered as part of a paid subscription or membership, used to attract customers or users to commercial services, used to increase the value of a commercial database or platform, or otherwise used primarily for commercial advantage or monetary compensation.
Free access does not mean unrestricted commercial reuse. The fact that material can be viewed or downloaded freely from They Had Names does not, by itself, constitute permission to use that material for commercial purposes.
Bulk Collection, Databases, and AI
Please do not scrape, crawl, harvest, systematically download, or copy substantial amounts of They Had Names content for the purpose of creating or enriching another database, research platform, commercial service, AI system, or other large-scale collection without prior written permission.
Ordinary indexing by general-purpose search engines that helps researchers discover They Had Names is welcome.
Content from They Had Names may not be used in bulk to train, fine-tune, develop, populate, or commercially operate an artificial-intelligence or machine-learning system without prior written permission. This is not intended to prevent individual researchers from using AI tools to assist with personal, genealogical, educational, or scholarly research involving individual records.
Historical Records and Facts
Many of the original historical records described or transcribed on They Had Names are in the public domain, and historical facts themselves are not claimed as the property of They Had Names. Researchers are always free to consult the original historical sources and conduct their own research from them.
They Had Names also contains original research, abstracts, transcriptions, explanatory material, annotations, organization, indexing, data compilation, and other work created through many years of research. Copyright and other rights may apply to those materials and to original aspects of their selection, coordination, and arrangement.
Some They Had Names research has previously been contributed to other public repositories or projects. Copies obtained from those sources remain subject to whatever terms accompanied the material when it was released there. This policy does not retroactively impose restrictions on copies previously released elsewhere without those restrictions.
Collaboration and Permission
This policy is not intended to discourage research or the sharing of historical information. They Had Names exists so that this information can be found and used.
The distinction I ask others to respect is between using freely available research to learn about and document the past and taking a substantial body of freely provided research and turning it into a commercial asset.
Researchers, descendant groups, educational institutions, nonprofit projects, and others interested in substantial use of They Had Names materials are welcome to contact me. I am happy to consider collaborations consistent with the project’s commitment to free public access.
If you are uncertain whether a proposed use requires permission, please contact me before using the material.
© 2017–2026 Stacy Ashmore Cole / They Had Names. All rights reserved except as expressly stated above.