Join expert Nicka Sewell-Smith as she takes a deeper dive into the Newspapers.com Enslavement Articles. Throughout the session, Nicka provides critical tips and tricks for researching ancestors in this specialized Ancestry collection. The collection currently focuses specifically on two article types: auctions and runaway slave ads (also referred to as fugitive slave ads or freedom seekers ads). This collection is US-based and generally covers dates pre-1870. Nicka teaches essential techniques to enhance researcher’s understanding of the collection, which reveals locations like New Orleans, Vicksburg, Charleston, and Richmond as highly represented areas connected to the slavery system and economy in the United States. The key objective is demonstrating how to leverage every detail in a record to move beyond a simple name, allowing researchers to find critical leads.
This session emphasizes a crucial genealogical methodology: to find information about the enslaved and track their lives, researchers must follow the enslavers and subsequent purchasers. Nicka illustrates this with a deep-dive case study analyzing an administrator sale advertisement from the Port Gibson Herald and Correspondent in Claybourne County, Mississippi, dating from 1850. By examining the administrator's sale of the John Bridger estate, the session reveals how to use probate packets—not just wills—to uncover sales records that list new enslavers and potentially other enslaved individuals not mentioned in the original newspaper ad. The session also highlights other valuable resources, including the newly released Louisiana births certificates collection (1911–1923), Dr. Midlo Hall's database of enslaved people in early Louisiana, and Ancestry's user-generated transcription tool for deciphering difficult documents.
Â
Chapters:
- Understanding the Scope of the Enslavement Articles Collection
- Leveraging Probate Records and Alternative Genealogical Resources
- Case Study: Tracing Individuals through the John Bridger Estate Sale
- Advanced Research Techniques and Supporting Collections
- Tracing Forward : From Sale to Freedom
Â
Start Tracing the lives of the enslaved today by utilizing the free-to-access Newspapers.com Enslavement Articles collection!