This guide will primarily be helpful to researchers who have already traced their African ancestors up to the "brick wall" of the 1870 census and are interested in their earlier ancestors. First you'll need some basic information about your ancestors slaveholders. Researching these details isn't for the faint of heart but knowing at least a little about them will give you clues for where to look for your ancestors in reconstruction era documents like the Freedman's Bureau records and make them easier to spot despite surname changes. Taking a DNA test and cross referencing information about these slave holders with your ethnicity percentages and the ethnicity percentages of the cousins on your match list will narrow your research to specific people and places which may then lead you to surviving slavery era records listing the names of your ancestors. If you haven't taken a DNA test some of the steps listed below will still work for you but this guide focuses on using test results in research.
Gather what you already know
1. Record the basics like names/nicknames, birth and death dates, occupations, etc.
2. Interview older relatives about what they may know about any enslaved ancestors and record this as well. If you need ideas for questions My Heritage has a helpful guide here. Don't dismiss any stories they happen to tell because you think they won't matter. Within a seemingly irrelevant story could be the clue you need to locate a hard to find ancestor. (See my first post on idioms.)
a) If a family bible or old framed photos exist photograph them and print the photos rather than making copies or scanning it. The handling required to make photocopies and scans may damage the spine of an already fragile book and old photos often stick to the glass of a frames they've been in for decades making removing it without damage impossible. An actual camera will work best in both cases but if a smart phone is all you have access to put your cellphone on a tripod (here's a short video about attaching phones to tripods) and follow this guide.
Start with the censuses
1. Search the 1850 census and slave schedule and the 1860 census for slaveholders living where you know your ancestors to be from and who have the same last name as your enslaved ancestors. Be sure to check neighboring cities and towns since county and state boundaries may have changed between censuses. Look for the following:
a) Are they listed as "farmers" or "planters"? Do they live near other farms or were they isolated? Note their household members and the names and ages of any children they had. (Slaves were often given to newly married children or passed on to them in wills.)
b) Where are they from and where were their parents born? This may give you clues to the source of any unexpected ethnicity results from your DNA test.
c) How many slaves did they have? Do any of the listed slaves ages match up with your ancestors ages?
d) Do they have female slaves with young children but no male slaves? This doesn't always mean the slave holder or another member of the household is their father...this is when it will be useful to know if there were nearby plantations and who owned them.
Enslaved people were sometimes allowed to socialize with and marry slaves on nearby plantations.
e) Are there free people listed in their household listed as being "mulatto", "pardo/parda" "creole" or "Indian"? Keep in mind that people of color were often referred to by these titles interchangeably and that they varied by region and sometimes implied social status. (You may want to research what terms were common for the place you're researching and what they meant at the time.)
Continue reading after the jump
Cross Referencing the information above with your DNA test results
1. Double check any unidentifiable but closely related DNA matches to be sure they aren't the result of a previous relationships unknown to you or adoption. Be considerate of everyone involved if that turns out to be the case. Even if everyone directly affected is deceased living relatives may be upset by this info. Decide whether or not you're willing to keep the secret before you are put on the spot by someone who knows you've been doing research.
2. Take a closer look at any DNA matches who are 4th-5th cousins whose largest ethnicity percentages don't match your own. Make a list with their username, match estimate amount and tree name/link. Ancestry makes this easy with the groups feature on the match page but I've found it to be glitchy at times. You'll have to double check these users trees for the correct surnames to eliminate anyone wrongly included due to the glitch.
a) Check the trees of these matches for the names of both your known ancestors and the slave holders you've found. This will be tedious but worth it. You may come across trees marked as private with friendly sounding messages about simply asking for access. Sometimes these trees are a work in progress only truly available to friends and immediate family...Skip these for now and focus on publicly available trees and record any relevant new information. At this point you'll probably come across the names of enslaved ancestors previously unknown to you in the family trees of DNA matches of more African descent. These names probably won't have any documented sources because they are passed down information. The only way to "verify" these names is to check to see if they repeat across generations within your tree and your DNA matches trees, if they obviously reference a slave holders name, or if they reference the name of a nearby place.
c) Don't be tempted to message a DNA match for more information right away. They're unlikely to know anything more than what is on their tree and what might be missing can be easily found by cross referencing their tree with the trees of your other matches or a quick census search. (Or even searching for one of their ancestors names within another unrelated to you users larger tree.) On ancestry this is as simple as clicking "view matches in common" on the match page or clicking "search" in the upper right when viewing a profile within a tree. Remember for all of the descendants of slave holders who are indifferent there are just as many who are mortified by their ancestors actions and they may not want to talk with you about them. I have personally seen this admission a lot in Facebook genealogy groups. A message from you; no matter how polite, won't change this and might even prompt them to remove their info from the site and slow your research down.
3. Start your own research into any newly found enslaved ancestors that you're lacking information on. Don't forget to look in the Freedman's Bureau records, local baptism records (these are often online), and newspaper databases.
a) Search any names you've found (especially unique ones) within quotation marks or search them along with a place they lived or event you know they were involved in on Google or Bing. Bing will often give different results than Google because Google ranks it's results based on stored information about your previous searches and also what search results people click on the most. Searching this was may bring up book previews with lists of slaves by name in legal documents, clipped newspaper article images for runaways, and blog results with family trees attached that you wouldn't find otherwise.
Update your tree with your newly found ancestors
1. Be sure to cite your sources! Genealogy.com has an article on accepted standards for citing sources here. Even if you choose not to follow these guidelines exactly your sources need to have enough detail so that other people with access to your tree and your future descendants can easily find them.
a) I don't recommend using links as a source without also noting the site authors name and their original sources as well for your personal records. Websites can and do disappear from the internet without warning. If this happens to you try checking the Wayback Machine for a cached version of the disappearing website.
