The Limitations of the Slave Lists

Lists of slaves drawn up in the period after the abolition of the slave trade can be mined for genealogical information, but using these lists as historical evidence depends on understanding the ways in which their contents are unstable. They are useful sources of information about communities of enslaved people, but conclusions about individuals have to take into account the following limitations:

  • About 9% of individuals were listed with two different names
    • Other individuals may also have had additional names that weren't listed
    • Relationships may be obscured and correlation between entries will be impossible if an individual is listed under different names in different places
    • Estimates of ages are unreliable, particularly for older people, sometimes varying by ten or fifteen years
    • Places of birth are not 100% reliable. Book-keepers recording the death of an enslaved person may not have known about their origins or cared about accuracy, and some individuals who were born in African were listed as 'creole' in later lists.
    • Colour categorizations are sometimes used as a reflection of an individual's heritage but sometimes more impressionistically as an indication of their skin tone.
    • Mother's names are often given for adults into middle age and beyond, but sometimes omitted for infants
      • It's possible that the names sometimes belonged to an adoptive mother, an aunt or grandmother, who stepped in to look after a child when their actual mother died. 
    Even if the lists were accurate and consistent, there is a great deal of information missing. Where enslaved people were known by multiple names, the name they or their parents chose may not be listed at all. Individuals born in Africa were generally stripped of their original name to deny them their identity and personal dignity. By presenting them to market under a new name, slave-traders could make them appear stronger (e.g. Hercules), wiser (e.g. Abraham) or more alluring (e.g. Venus). 

    Fathers' names are never given, so it's only possible to trace female lines. Last names were chosen and passed on in a variety of ways, not necessarily indicating family relationships. It isn't unusual for the children of enslaved women to have had a range of different last names, and there are several possible explanations for this.

    • The children might have taken their last names from different fathers
    • Enslaved people sometimes adopted last names later in life, and siblings may have made different choices
    • Enslaved people were sometimes called by the last name of their current or previous owner, even where there was no biological relationship. 
    • Enslaved parents may have chosen to give or been coerced into giving their children the last name of book-keepers of overseers employed by the plantation owner.
    • Enslaved parents may have chosen to give their children the last name of enslaved or free people they admired and/or hoped for support from
    • Many enslaved people did not have a last name (or it wasn't recorded), and individuals without a family last name couldn't pass one on to their children
      • only 11% of individuals born before 1750 were listed with a last name
      • this rose to 17% for those born between 1750 and 1799 
      • and to 23% for babies born from 1800 onwards
        • including about a third of those born after 1817
        • and two-thirds to three quarters of those born after 1827 
    However, last names do sometimes indicate family relationships: 
    • Children sometimes have the last name their mother was registered with when she was born, suggesting that last names were sometimes passed from mother to child
    • Children within the same family who had a white father often share the same last name, and this suggests that last names were passed from white fathers to their children with greater consistency
    • Children of the same mother sometimes share their last name with their siblings but not with their mother, and this suggests that last names were sometimes passed from enslaved fathers to their children

    In general, I have only looked for family connections between individuals listed on the same estate. This is on the assumption that enslaved people were generally not moved from one estate to another, but I have found a few provable exceptions. 



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