Researching Your African American Ancestors (continued) - Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives

Local government records from Kentucky's 120 counties document the transition from slavery to freedom. Created by an act of the legislature in 1866, Freedmen's Marriage Registers legalized marital unions that existed prior to 1865. While slavery posed a constant threat to the black family unit, some marriages predated emancipation by decades. Other transitional sources include Freedmen's Indentures of Apprenticeships Books a county record that probably reflects efforts to control former slaves. Many black children were apprenticed to whites after the war if the county court determined that they were without a guardian or if the parents were too impoverished or allegedly too irresponsible to provide proper care. Parents or other relatives fought this attempt to indenture their children, working through the Freedmen's Bureau and the courts to regain them. Such records provide researchers with the child's age and the name of the individual appointed by the court to teach them a trade.

Public records also reflect the harsh reality of race relations in Kentucky after the Civil War. Marriage records, tax lists, and school census records were in most cases maintained separately by local officials according to race. Marriage records in particular were maintained separately by county clerks well into the twentieth century.

Judicial records, both civil and criminal, are also excellent genealogical sources. Civil cases at the Circuit Court level may involve legal disputes over the inheritance and/or legal ownership of "slave property" or complaints of nonpayment and of damages incurred through the injury or abuse of leased slaves. Many of these sources will provide the ages, physical descriptions, and given names of African Americans held in slavery. More importantly, parentage and other information about slave families may be revealed that will enable a researcher to link several generations. Although the majority of African- Americans did not adopt surnames until after the Civil War, the identification of the former owner might provide a clue. It was probably no coincidence that James Howard, a freedman, resided next to Cornelius Howard, a welltodo white resident of Elliott County in 1870. While identified through local tradition as one of "Neal Howard's slaves", court records confirmed the story, identifying "Neal Howard's Black Jim" as a participant in forays by local Unionists against his master's rebel neighbors in old Morgan County.

After 1865, judicial records may contain testimony from individual African Americans. Other civil and criminal case files from the Reconstruction era may deal with protection under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

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Other primary genealogical sources such as Kentucky's Vital Statistics (1911present) are extremely valuable in providing links for the present generations with their forebears. The 1870 Federal Census for Boyd County lists two freedmen, Zachariah and Rueben Bolt, as residents of Ashland and Catlettsburg, respectively. The 1860 Slave Census for Boyd, one of the few counties that provides the names of both owners and slaves, revealed that both men were once the "property" of Major Isaac Bolt, a prominent local official. Even if their names had not been given in this record, the Major's will served as another clue to ownership, and revealed that they were inherited by one of his children on the eve of the Civil War. This illustrates how researchers might break through the barriers created by slavery. A search of additional records relating to these "owners" could well provide links with earlier generations.