The Names of Nearly 4 Million Enslaved People in Former British Colonies Are Now Searchable Online, Helping Descendants Find Lost Ancestors

A few years ago, we fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture the Freedmen’s Bureau Project data­base, which con­tains search­able infor­ma­tion on for­mer­ly enslaved peo­ple in the Unit­ed States after its Civ­il War. With near­ly 1.8 mil­lion men, women, and chil­dren reg­is­tered there when it first opened to the pub­lic, it has remained a valu­able resource for many Amer­i­cans research­ing their own her­itage, not just descen­dants of for­mer slaves but of oth­er Civ­il War refugees as well. But of course, the U.S. was hard­ly the only coun­try where slav­ery exist­ed.

Count­less peo­ple here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry have ances­tors who were enslaved in oth­er for­mer British colonies, and now they’ve got a por­tal through which to do genealog­i­cal search­es of their own. Launched by a part­ner­ship between the geneal­o­gy com­pa­ny Ances­try and the Cen­tre for the Study of the Lega­cies of British Slav­ery at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don, the online For­mer British Colonies Enslave­ment Reg­is­ters makes avail­able records on near­ly four mil­lion indi­vid­u­als enslaved between 1813 and 1840 in a host of coun­tries from the Bahamas to Mau­ri­tius to South Africa. First cre­at­ed by the British gov­ern­ment dur­ing the process of abol­ish­ing the transat­lantic slave trade in 1807 — much as the Freedmen’s Bureau orga­nized its reg­istry of for­mer slaves dur­ing Recon­struc­tion under Abra­ham Lin­coln — the orig­i­nal papers con­tain not just their names and ages, but also mater­nal fam­i­ly con­nec­tions, phys­i­cal descrip­tions, and some­times details about their place of African ori­gin.

In the video above, geneal­o­gist and Ances­try Senior Sto­ry Pro­duc­er Nic­ka Sewell-Smith pro­vides an intro­duc­tion to the For­mer British Colonies Enslave­ment Reg­is­ters, which you can access here. If you’re curi­ous about whether your own ances­tors may appear in its records, you can search by details like name, approx­i­mate date, or loca­tion to nar­row down the poten­tial match­es. The mod­ern descen­dants of peo­ple enslaved in the 20 coun­tries cov­ered by the data­base by no means live exclu­sive­ly, or even pri­mar­i­ly, in those coun­tries or in Great Britain itself.

More than two cen­turies lat­er, their descen­dants live all over the world, includ­ing in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Unit­ed States, lead­ing lives very dif­fer­ent from those of their enslaved ances­tors — but the recon­struc­tion of their fam­i­ly sto­ries has only just begun. Enter the data­base here. The Atlantic Slave Trade Visu­al­ized in Two Min­utes: 10 Mil­lion Lives, 20,000 Voy­ages, Over 315 Years The Names of 1.8 Mil­lion Eman­ci­pat­ed Slaves Are Now Search­able in the World’s Largest Genealog­i­cal Data­base, Help­ing African Amer­i­cans Find Lost Ances­tors 1.5 Mil­lion Slav­ery Era Doc­u­ments Will Be Dig­i­tized, Help­ing African Amer­i­cans to Learn About Their Lost Ances­tors Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War Hear the Voic­es of Amer­i­cans Born in Slav­ery: The Library of Con­gress Fea­tures 23 Audio Inter­views with For­mer­ly Enslaved Peo­ple (1932–75) The Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion: A Free Course Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture.

He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall. by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Comments (0) | We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion.

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