African-American Genealogy: 80 Top Resources for Finding Your African Ancestors

Introduction

For anyone tracing their ancestors in America, Crestleaf has to feature highly in places to start!

With over 90 Million family records in the United States alone, Crestleaf.com is a leading provider of free genealogy information and free online collaboration tool for families to document their family history - create family trees, digitally preserve family photos, documents and oral traditions. Users can gather family photos, important documents, family artifacts and store them in Crestleaf's digital archive for all family members to access and share. Family members can create a timeline of key family moments, historical events, and upload historical photos to bring a family's story to life.


This week's blog from Crestleaf is a veritable "linkathon" for those research their African American roots!  

Blog

A Collection of African-American Genealogy Resources

If you’ve hit a brick wall in your African-American genealogy research, you’re definitely not alone! You’ll likely find it more difficult to find certain records than with other types of genealogy research if you have African and slave roots since record keeping for African Americans prior to the Civil War just wasn’t thought of.

But don’t get to frustrated just yet. There are plenty of great African-American genealogy resources available on and offline, so we compiled a list of 80 African-American ancestry links to help you fill in some genealogy research holes and add missing stories to your family tree.

From African-American surnames, to Freedmen’s Bureau records collections and helpful blogs, you’re likely to find a long lost family member by utilizing our list below.

Resources for Discovering your African-American Ancestors

African-American Census, Death & Marriage Records

• Access Genealogy: Black Genealogy Records
• AfriGeneas: African-American Census Schedules Online 
  
• Free African Americans
  
• Lowcountry Africana
  
• United States Census Bureau
  
• Online Searchable Death Indexes & Records
  
• Death Pentalty USA – Database of United States Executions
  
• 1870 Federal Census Black and Mulatto Households – Perry County, Alabama
  
• Register of Slaves Brought into Alabama – After January 16, 1832 in Perry County
  
• Census Links
  

Freedmen’s Bureau Records Collections

Photo credit: Gallery Hip

• National Archives Freedmen’s Bureau Records
• The Freedmen’s Bureau Online
• Freedmen & Southern Society Project
• Early Black Marriages of Fort Smith, Arkansas
• Freedmen’s Bureau Records at the Africana Archives
• Freedmen’s Bureau Reports – Hernando County, Florida
• Arkansas Freedmen of the Frontier
• The Valley of the Shadow Freedmen’s Bureau Records
• Mapping the Freedmen’s Bureau – An interactive map that assists researchers in determining if there was a Bureau office near their ancestral home.

African-American Military Service Records

• U.S. National Park Service Soldiers & Sailors Database: The Civil War
• FamilySearch – African-American Military Records
• African-American Military History
• African-American Women and the Military
• African-American Military Records – The USGenWeb Project

Immigration & Slave Trade Voyage Information

• The African-American Migration Experience
• Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
• Voyage to Discovery – Untold Stories of African-Americans and the Sea

African-American Surname Search & Slave Names

• African-American Surname Matches
• Unknown No Longer – Database of Virginia Slave Names
• AfriGeneas Surname Search
• Caribbean Surname Index

African-American Newspapers, Magazines & Online Collections

• American Memory Collection – From the Library of Congress
• Online Historical Newspapers – The Ancestor Hunt
• BlackRefer: African-American Newspaper Listings

Library Resources, Centers & Archives for African-American Genealogy Research

• National Archives African-American Heritage Resources
• Researching Southern Claims Commission Records – St. Louis County Library 
• Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center: African-American Gateway
• Documenting the American South
• The USF Africana Heritage Project
• The Amistad Research Center
• Connecticut State Library: African-American Genealogy Resources
• University of North Carolina Greensboro Digital Library on American Slavery
• Enoch-Pratt Free Library: African-American Genealogy
• National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
• Brooklyn Public Library – Black Genealogy Research

African-American Cemeteries, Monuments & Tombstones

Photo credit: ghosttowns.com

• African-American Cemeteries Online – Cemeteries and black churches
• Resting Places of United States Colored Troops
• Find A Grave: African-American Historic Cemetery
• The African-American Historic Cemeteries of Portsmouth, Virginia

Genealogical Societies, Groups & Organizations

• The Center for African-American Genealogy Research
• African-American Genealogical Society of Northern California
• The African-American Genealogy Group of the Miami Valley (Ohio)
• Black Belt African American Genealogical & Historical Society
• African American Genealogy Interest Group – Facebook group
• Oberlin African-American Genealogy & History Group
• African American Genealogical Society of Cleveland, Ohio
• African-American Genealogy Group of Philadelphia
• International Society of Sons and Daughters of Slave Ancestry

Photo credit: Isthmus.com

• African Ancestry: DNA Testing Kits – Trace your DNA. Find your roots.
• Behind the Veil: Documenting African-American Life in the Jim Crow South – 410 recorded oral history interviews chronicling African-American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South, 1890s – 1950s.
• Our Georgia Roots – Honoring our ancestors of Wilkes and Warren Counties
• Our Alabama Roots – Honoring our ancestors of Barbour, Henry and Houston Counties
• Taneya’s Genealogy Blog
• Roots Revealed
• Who is Nicka Smith?
• Terrence Garnett’s Family Research
• Finding Eliza
• Notes to Myself
• Between the Gate Posts
• Our Black Ancestry
• Black Loyalist
• Finding African Americans on the 1870 Census
• Christine’s Genealogy Website
• African Roots Podcast
• Reclaiming Kin
• The Black Past: Remembered & Reclaimed
• The African-Native American Genealogy Page
• The African-American Migration Experience
• Slaves and the Courts, 1740 – 1860
• American Slave Narratives
• African-American Coal Miner Information Page

Do you know of other African-American ancestry research resources missing from our list? Let us know in the comments!


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