Michigan State University’s “Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade” website released new information on over 2 million Black Americans born before emancipation who were recorded in the 1900 census. The new database will be used in future research and by the general public to learn more about their family history.
In addition to researchers from Michigan State University, the team was also led by scholars from Georgia State University, Brigham Young University in Utah, and FamilySearch International, a nonprofit genealogical organization. While an exact percentage cannot be calculated, researchers estimate as much as 86 to 89 percent of the over 2 million Black Americans over the age of 45 counted in the 1900 census were enslaved before emancipation.
This new dataset will enable numerous possible research applications.Containing multiple layers of demographic data for each individual, the database also includes links to original census images and family tree records.In addition, for over 1.7 million of the people in the dataset, a Family Tree Person ID link will take users to an ancestors page on FamilySearch. On that page, users can add in missing data along with historical record sources to flesh out each person’s history. Users who sign up for a free FamilySearch account also have the option to enter their own family tree data and determine if and how they are related to the formerly enslaved and free Black Americans.
“Tracing people from the era of enslavement into the generations that followed emancipation presents exceptional challenges to descendants and researchers,” the project team writes. By assembling this rich demographic data on Black Americans born at or before the general emancipation period, the researchers hope to “establish kinship and community networks of foundational knowledge essential for unearthing earlier generations to reconstruct relationships between formerly enslaved people, their immediate kin, their descendants, and the communities in which they lived.”