ancestry.com

[lamontep49]

I love this website. i had it for years but really didnt get into it til my father dead in 2014. I knew my basic family but that was it. The only thing that bums me out about it is most black has no record before 1865 because of slavery. you might find some rare information about somebody but not much. but overall ancestry has become a hobby for me. For somebody who only knew the basic family members. I have 2,099 in my tree.

 

[JahFocus CS]

I don't think it's correct to say there are no records before 1865. It just gets a hell of a lot more difficult if your ancestors were enslaved and not free people of color. You have to trace back to the last family they were held by and start relying more on probate/court records and records that the slaveholding family may still have.

I think too many of us give up too easily when we hit that period. I'm going through it now. Traced a few lines back to the 1830s/1840s but have gotten stalled out. Probably gonna have to get a professional genealogist to assist with those lines because they'll need to reference local records and stuff on microfilm that I don't have access to or the time to get at this point. Also going to have to research the slaveholding families to contact a descendant regarding records they may have. That's going to be a tough pill for me to swallow.

 

[lamontep49]

I don't think it's correct to say there are no records before 1865. It just gets a hell of a lot more difficult if your ancestors were enslaved and not free people of color. You have to trace back to the last family they were held by and start relying more on probate/court records and records that the slaveholding family may still have.

I think too many of us give up too easily when we hit that period. I'm going through it now. Traced a few lines back to the 1830s/1840s but have gotten stalled out. Probably gonna have to get a professional genealogist to assist with those lines because they'll need to reference local records and stuff on microfilm that I don't have access to or the time to get at this point. Also going to have to research the slaveholding families to contact a descendant regarding records they may have. That's going to be a tough pill for me to swallow.

oh yea im with u i was just using 1865 as example. its just harder to find anything before. for me the earliest family member i have was born in 1829. what makes it hard for me is on my father side. most of them are from a very rural area in georgia. were not much info was recorded from. But ill never give looking up info

 

[Ol’Otis]

i went back to my 4th great grandfather
he was born in Mississippi in 1835

it can be kind of depressing

 

[lamontep49]

i went back to my 4th great grandfather
he was born in Mississippi in 1835

it can be kind of depressing

on my mother side most of her family from kentucky they kept up with alot of the records in that state. but my dad father i cant find to much on him or his parents thats kind of frustrating. im not going to say its depressing to me it puts a smile on face when i find a new family especially when they have a picture of that person

 

[One]

It's all we can do now, but in the future we'll reflect on a great distance traveled and find it unbelievable that we once had to pay people to tell us things about our own families. If there's ever anything that we've been entitled to, free genealogy is it.

I haven't done it myself, but congratulations to all of ya'll for learning more about your families.

 

[KwamePiesie]

ive traced my third great grandfather back from Suriname to Guyana (former british Guyana) to Jamaica
and now im on a mission to find more..

 

[CoryMack]

I always get stalled out in the beginning

 

[lamontep49]

if you wanna find more information go to mooseroots.com they have alot information there free. if your trying to find graves. findagrave.com

 

[JahFocus CS]

It's all we can do now, but in the future we'll reflect on a great distance traveled and find it unbelievable that we once had to pay people to tell us things about our own families. If there's ever anything that we've been entitled to, free genealogy is it.

I haven't done it myself, but congratulations to all of ya'll for learning more about your families.

For real. I feel that this type of stuff would need to be part of any reparations package that we might win in the future. Also, there needs to be a centralized database of probate records pertaining to enslaved people, as well as of records held by the slaveholding families.

 

[Samori Toure]

I love this website. i had it for years but really didnt get into it til my father dead in 2014. I knew my basic family but that was it. The only thing that bums me out about it is most black has no record before 1865 because of slavery. you might find some rare information about somebody but not much. but overall ancestry has become a hobby for me. For somebody who only knew the basic family members. I have 2,099 in my tree.

That is not true. There are probably more records on Black people due to slavery than any other group in America. You have to remember that Black people were considered chattel (property). Some counties in some slave states taxed the property of owners so the names of slaves sometimes appeared in county records.

Marriage certificates, death certificates, cemetery records, military records, etc; often list the names of parents and hometowns of Black people. I found one of my great, great grandmother's death certificate in Tennessee and it listed the year that she was born (1835); where she was born (Virginia) and her mother's name. I have not had the time to research Virginia records yet, but the last name might indicate what plantation my great, great, great grandmother was on, but if it does then I can check family records like Bibles and Country records for more information.

 

[JahFocus CS]

mooseroots.com

Hadn't heard of this one before thanks breh, repped

 

[Logmanjames]

Yeah I was planning on creating an account sometime soon. I had given up hope on tracing my mom's side of the family because they were from the Caribbean, but last week I decided I'd at least give it a go and apparently they have records of the British Slave owners and I MAY find records of my ancestors. Family history is some cool stuff. I also plan on taking a DNA test sometime, that would make it easier to see where in Africa they came from

 

[lamontep49]

this might help to findagrave.com

 

[Guvnor]

I always wanted to do so, especially to verify the claim made by mother that my grandmother(her mother) had Caribbean Indigenous ancestry and maybe one day I will look into this. I also want to do the DNA test though I know it's not one hundred percent accurate.