Some Resources (and a New Roadblock) in African American Research
On 19 June 1865, Major General Gordon Granger and his regiment landed at Galveston, Texas, to announce that the war had ended and the previously enslaved were free. “Wait,” you might think. “Wasn’t that 2½ years after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect?” Yes; yes, it was. Texas had not had a significant enough Union presence in the intervening years to enforce that executive order. So the enslaved of Texas knew nothing of their freedom until that June 19th and the arrival of Granger. Since that date, “Juneteenth,” as it came to be known, has celebrated the ending of slavery in the United States.[1]
To commemorate Juneteenth, even belatedly, I wanted to publicize a few new and/or important resources in African American research, as well as a recently created roadblock that significantly impacts researchers. I’ll start with the bad news first. It’s not insubstantial.
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About Author
Aaron Goodwin
Aaron is a genealogist and house historian specializing in New York City research across all time periods, from the Dutch colonial era to the 20th century. His book, New York City Municipal Archives: An Authorized Guide for Family Historians, won the National Genealogical Society’s 2017 Award for Excellence: Genealogical Methods and Sources. He is also editor of NGS Monthly, former contributing editor of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, and former editor of the Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine. In 2011, he received the American Society of Genealogists’ Scholar Award.
See my blog post about the Slave Name Roll Project and the 120 plus people enslaved by my ancestors and their children: https://scpgen.blogspot.com/2017/08/slave-name-roll-project.html
Steven C Perkins
Some time after Crista Cowan replied to my post about the lack of indexing for owners of enslaved persons in the slave schedules, I noticed an update and a very positive one – slave schedules are now indexed by the owners’ names. That is a huge improvement and I credit Crista with passing along the indexing issue to the tech people. Thank you for mentioning my posts. It is much appreciated.