African American heritage ..............Carol DiPirro-Stipkovits

Tracing hidden roots

How to uncover African American heritage

Do you have African American heritage and wonder how to begin your research? Because enslaved people didn’t have legal rights prior to 1865, it can be difficult to track their lives through census, birth, marriage, and death records. But there are other records that can help.

In 1865, Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, commonly referred to as the Freedmen’s Bureau, a federal agency intended to reunite the country and help formerly enslaved people transition to freedom. The Bureau was responsible for providing aid to more than four million people. In operation until 1872, the bureau opened schools, managed hospitals, supplied food and clothing, assisted soldiers and sailors in securing back pay, and performed legal marriages. Along the way, it gathered personal data about the people it served, including labor contracts, rations, apprenticeships, letters, marriage information, and more. These hundreds of thousands of documents provide a view into the lives of the newly freed. Ancestry.com offers this digitized collection for free at ancestry.com/cs/freedmens Bank records are also useful to research African American heritage. Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company was incorporated in 1865 by President Abraham Lincoln. Its purpose was to create an institution where formerly enslaved people and their dependents could save money safely. Before it closed in 1874, there were deposits of more than $57 million from 70,000 depositors. Many of these bank records have survived and are indexed in a database that includes depositor signatures and images of original forms required to open an account. The questions asked on each form varied by branch, but the common information included name, date of transaction, birthplace, residence, age, occupation, spouse, children, and parent’s information. The earliest records sometimes contain names of former owners as well as plantation name. Ancestry.com has digitized this collection as well. Find it at ancestry. com/search/collections/8755/ Finally, ancestry.com also offers another free database, Interviews with Formerly Enslaved People, 1936-1938 that contains more than 2,300 first person accounts of slavery along with hundreds of black and white photos. Cowboys, field hands, and domestic workers share stories about everything from treatment by owners to views of everyday life. This collection is organized by state and the first page of each includes a list of the informants’ names. The stories give a gutwrenching view of slavery and is worth checking out at ancestry.com/search/ collections/1944.

Researching our ancestors can be rewarding but also frustrating. Those with African American ancestors are faced with an extra layer of complexity as many records are incomplete or even non-existent. That makes surviving records all the more valuable for the information they reveal. FY

CAROL DIPIRRO-STIPKOVITS

Carol DiPirro-Stipkovits is a member of the National Genealogical Society and Association of Professional Genealogists. She has a monthly column in the Niagara Gazette and Forever Young. Send questions or comments to noellasdaughter@gmail.com.