This site is, and always will be, free. We’re not here to make money, nor do we accept donations of money. But we do need help. Here are some ideas of how you can get involved.
- Spread the word. Share us on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media. Email your friends and fellow researchers about us. Subscribe to our RSS feed in your favorite RSS or email app.
- Suggest new data sources. If you find a good data source on slaves or free persons of color in the pre-Civil War era, let us know about it. It can be an online database, or a online source like a census abstract. Even if the format is copyrighted, the underlying data may not be.
- Volunteer to transcribe data. We are less interested in individual records than in sets of records covering at least an entire county or parish. Examples include;
- Tax Lists
- Census Records
- Slave Schedules
- Wills/Estates
- Freedman’s Bureau or Freedman’s Bank records
- Or any list of blacks/mulattoes such as the Book of Negroes
If you want to help with data, please contact us before starting any transcription. We’ll take a look at the data and provide you with an Excel Spreadsheet to facilitate the task.