Best African-American Genealogy Websites of 2014

Look to these websites to learn more about your African-American heritage.

 

Search databases including a slave records collection, death and marriage records, census schedules and a surnames database. Or connect with fellow researchers with regular chats, message boards and mailing lists.

 

Powerful search tools make it a snap to explore this database of 100,000 Louisiana slaves, collected during 15 years of research by Dr. Gwendolyn Hall, professor emerita of history at Rutgers University. You can also view original slave inventory pages.

 

Extracted from county court and legislative petitions, wills, inventories, deeds, bills of sale and other records, this site’s data provides details on about 80,000 individual slaves and 8,000 free people of color, plus 62,000 whites. Coverage spans 1775 to 1867 and all 15 slaveholding states plus the District of Columbia. 

 

Now including its own line of digital books, this site doesn’t focus exclusively on African-American heritage, but it’s nonetheless a rich resource for genealogists tracing African-American roots. Collections include “The Church in the Southern Black Community,” “The Colonial and State Records of North Carolina” and “North American Slave Narratives.”

 

This handsome site focus on African-American history in South Carolina, Florida and Georgia, ranging from records of slaveholders to a “reading room” for Freedmen’s Bureau microfilms. A new Beginning Genealogy page will help you get started.

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