Library presentation gives insight on black ancestry research

Jeff Helsdon, Editor

Researching ancestry is often part detective, part historian, and part puzzle-solver, but if your ancestor was a slave and not recorded in early history, the challenge is greater.

Confronting that challenge, and others involved in any ancestry research, were outlined by Oxford County Library’s Matthew Griffis during a recent seminar in conjunction with Black History Month.

One interesting document is British General Guy Carleton’s Book of Negroes. This 1783 document lists 3,000 British loyalists who left New York State for Nova Scotia and were promised freedom. There is an online database to search that document for those who believe their ancestors lived in Nova Scotia.

Griffis also finds a digitized map of the Underground Railroad routes in Canada helpful. Joyce Pettigrew’s book A Safe Haven on settlers in Oxford County and Robin Winks book The Blacks in Canada are also sources where settlers names can be researched.

Since not all Blacks in the United States were slaves prior to the Civil War, Griffis suggested American records may reveal information.

“There were free persons of colour in the U.S. recorded in the federal census,” he said.

The situation for slaves is different, and their names were likely listed under their owners. The 1860 census was the last before the Civil War and wouldn’t have individual names, but would have if a household had slaves and the numbers. Some slaves didn’t have surnames and adopted their former owner’s surnames after abolition. After the Civil War and abolition, many Black people remained in the same areas they had been in, and names could appear in the 1870 census.

Online resources, such as ancestry.com, are another source of information. For those who don’t have a subscription, Griffis said it can be accessed through the local Church of Latter-day Saints, which does have a subscription.