Specific Resources for Black and African American Genealogy
AfriGeneas
AfriGeneas is devoted to researching African Ancestry in the Americas in particular and to genealogical research and resources in general. It is also an African Ancestry research community featuring their mail list, message boards, and daily and weekly genealogy chats.
Low Country Africana
Lowcountry Africana is dedicated to records that document the family and cultural heritage of African Americans in the historic rice-growing areas of South Carolina, Georgia and extreme northeastern Florida, an area that scholars and preservationists have identified as a distinct culture area.
The Race and Slavery Petitions Project
The Race and Slavery Petitions Project offers data on race and slavery extracted from eighteenth and nineteenth-century documents and processed over a period of eighteen years. The Project contains detailed information on about 150,000 individuals, including slaves, free people of color, and whites. These data were extracted from 2,975 legislative petitions and 14,512 county court petitions, and from a wide range of related documents, including wills, inventories, deeds, bills of sale, depositions, court proceedings, amended petitions, among others. Buried in these documents are the names and other data on roughly 80,000 individual slaves, 8,000 free people of color, and 62,000 whites, both slave owners and non-slave owners.
The USF African Heritage Project
The University of South Florida project is dedicated to discovering the names and lives of former slaves, freed persons, and their descendants, and share those records on this free internet site.
Overview of African American Research
This link examines many of the records available, dealing both with slave and non-slave related records. In cases where the records are the same as European American records, the text will attempt to show researchers how to use these sources to find African Americans most effectively.
African American Genealogy & Slave Ancestry Research
The African American Genealogy & Slave Ancestry Research (AAGSAR) is a technology-centric, collaborative for genealogists researching their slave ancestry.
African American Genealogical Research at the DAR Library
The DAR Library has developed a strong and growing collection of basic and detailed printed sources on this subject. In the Library’s General/African American section library patrons will find research manuals and guidebooks, histories on slavery and abolition, the “Great Migration” of the early twentieth century, general reference materials, and scholarly and popular journals, including a complete run of the Journal of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society.
Ancestry.com
Probably the most comprehensive resource to start your genealogical search on web. It is the world’s largest online family history resource home to billions of historical records, millions of family trees and much more.
African American Family Database (AAFD) Project
The AAFD project is hosted by the Central Virginia History Researchers, a partnership among local historians, anthropologists, genealogists, and community residents. CVHR is developing a database for connecting African-American families to their antebellum roots and tracing patterns of community formation in the post-bellum period.
THE INTERNATIONAL AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM’S CENTER FOR FAMILY HISTORY
The Center is a research center with a special focus on African American genealogy. The Center for Family History is unique center of learning with resources and programs to help individuals and families understand their family’s history and the role their ancestors played in shaping American history. The center will be a part of the International African American Museum, projected to open in 2022.
University of North Carolina-Greensboro
Digital Library on American Slavery
Multiple databases of petitions, runaway enslaved people, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, Slave Deeds of North Carolina, Insurance registries.
The Soldiers and Sailors Database
Almost 200,000 black men enlisted in the Civil War. This database includes the names and service history of these men and others who served. The database also includes a list of Confederate soldiers and sailors.
The Texas Slavery Project examines the spread of American slavery into the borderlands between the United States and Mexico in the decades between 1820 and 1850. Centered on a database of slave and slaveholder populations in Texas during the Republic era (1837-45), the Texas Slavery Project offers a window into the role slavery played in the development of Texas in the years before the region became part of the United States. Dynamic interactive maps show the changing flows of enslaved and slaveholder populations in Texas over time. The population database search engine allows users to discover the growth of slave and slaveholder populations in the region. Digitized original documents from the era provide an opportunity to hear the voices of those who lived with slavery in early Texas
National Archives
Official genealogy portal for the US National Archives, contains guidance for genealogy research and diverse archives of American records.
FamilySearch
FamilySearch provides resources and is tied to real-world family history classes and Family History Centers around the world.
ProGenealogists
ProGenealogists offers paid research services but also provides a useful set of tools and links for getting started on your own.
Genealogy Today
Genealogy publication with advice on getting started, links, and more.
World Vital Records
One of the more popular paid genealogy databases site.
OTHER RESOURCES ON THIS WEBSITE
Family Trees
Misbach Enterprises
Downloadable genealogy charts (pdf)
MyHeritageGeni
Social network-oriented family tree sharing sites
Family Tree Maker
Popular genealogy software associated with ancestry.com
Lovetoknow Genealogy
Suggestions for making your own family tree
International Research
The WorldGenWeb Project
Volunteer-based organization for international genealogy
Genealogylinks
50,000 links sorted by region
Other Links
Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society
Its primary goals are to promote scholarly research, provide resources for historical and genealogical studies, create a network of persons with similar interests, and assist members in documenting their histories.
23andMe
Offers DNA testing resources to learn ancestry and personal health information.
Fold3 by Ancestry
Access to more documents from the National Archives, with a set of tools for uploading, annotating, and sharing
US GenNet
Free and advertisement-free hosting of genealogy sites for educational purposes, public research, or study of national historic heritage
Interment
Cemetery records online
Family Tree DNA
Information on DNA genealogy
Genebase
Family Tree DNA
DNA ancestry testing services
Pro Genealogist
Pro Genealogist’s guide to sites their genealogists use, with indications of which are free and which are paid.