How to Trace Your African American Family History
Researching your family history can lead one down many paths, some full of adventure and others reaching a dead end. African American genealogical research takes both paths because of the scant records kept prior to the Civil War. Pre-Civil War research records depend on the person's status - slave or free. The National Archives has many records available to researchers and many genealogical societies are publishing slave indexes and cemetery research for African American history.
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Instructions
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Compile information known about the family. It is important to start at home with the documents you have and the information you know. Download and print ancestral charts, family group sheets, and source summary sheets. See Resources for information on these sheets.
To complete the ancestral chart, start by putting your name in the spot farthest to the left. Going up and to the right is your father. Going down and to the right is your mother. Enter their names and continue adding their parents and so forth. Enter all the birth, marriage and death information you know.
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Complete the family group sheet. Begin with your parents at the top and write down all the information you have on them. Then enter yourself and your siblings, if any, in the spaces indicated for children. Write down all the information on you and your siblings. Create a new family group sheet for each family beginning with your father's parents, then mother's parents and work backwards.
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Search for African American records in the state archives where your ancestors lived. State archives typically hold census records, military records, slave records, land records, and other local and state governmental records.
Use the printed source summary sheet to record the places, records and results you search. This will guide your research and save time by not looking through the same records again.
Download and print census forms (see Resources). Each census recorded slightly different information on U.S. citizens. Transcribe census records you find on your ancestors onto these forms.
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Search for African American records in the National Archives. The National Archives holds Pre-Civil War records through correspondence and private citizens records. Slave records are rarely found at the National Archives.
The National Archives also hold military records, census and land records. Records created by the Commissioners of Claims, the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company and the Bureau of Refugees, Freedman, and Abandoned Land all hold genealogical and black family life history.
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Compile all the information located to see where the gaps in the family occur. Create a research plan to look for additional information to fill in those gaps.
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Tips & Warnings
Continue searching even when you hit a dead end. There are record sources available.
The National Archives does hold some Slave Manifests for Charleston and Beaufort.
The National Archives do not hold slave records.
References
Resources
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