Free African American Genealogy Records & Resources

Welcome to the internets newest Free Genealogy Site, but we are working hard to become the Best Free Genealogy Site!

Below you will find many links to free African American Genealogy sites & resources.

We've divided them into specific time periods for quicker browsing.

Be sure and bookmark this site and check back often as we will be adding free records almost daily. If you know of any Insert Subject records you think should be listed, please leave us a message here and will be happy to include them.

Pre 1600 Records

	African American History Timeline: 1492-1600 1619: Approximately 20 blacks from a Dutch slaver are purchased as indentured workers for the English settlement of Jamestown. These are the first Africans in the English North American colonies. 1688: Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania denounce slavery in the first recorded formal protest in North America against the enslavement of Africans.
	FREE AFRICAN AMERICANS OF VIRGINIA, NORTH CAROLINA SOUTH CAROLINA, MARYLAND AND DELAWARE Family history of 500 African American families who were free in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware from the colonial period.

1600-1700 Records

African American History Timeline: 1601-1700

1603: Mathieu Da Costa, a free black explorer, guides the French through parts of Canada and the Lake Champlain region of what is now New York state.

1625: The first enslaved Africans arrive in the Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam (now New York City) with the Dutch West India Company. They quickly become the city's first municipal labor force, clearing land of timber, cutting lumber, cultivating crops, and constructing roads and fortifications.

1700-1800 Records

	African American History Timeline: 1701-1800 1708: Africans in South Carolina outnumber Europeans, making it the first English colony with a black majority. 1790: Census of 1790 (First Census of the U.S. Population): Total population, 3,929,214, Black Population: 757,208 (19.3%) including 59,150 free African Americans.
	Afro-Louisiana History & Genealogy 1718-1820 Dr. Hall, the Center for the Public Domain, and ibiblio.org bring you the Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy 1699 - 1820 Database, a user-friendly, searchable, online database that is freely accessible to the public.
	Servitude and Emancipation Records Database, 1722–1863 This database includes approximately 3,400 names found in governmental records involving the servitude and emancipation of Africans and, occasionally, Indians in the French and English eras of colonial Illinois (1722–1790) and African-Americans in the American period of Illinois (1790–1863). The Archives extracted the names of servants, slaves, or free persons and masters, witnesses, or related parties from selected governmental records to produce this database.

1800-1850 Records

	The Friend of Man FThe Friend of Man, a newspaper published for the New York State Anti-Slavery Society between 1836 and 1842, is now available online to scholars worldwide, thanks to Cornell University Library. Published by J.F. Bishop in Utica, N.Y., the newspaper documents the early anti-slavery movement in upstate New York.
	African-American Cohabitation Records 1806-1866 African-American Cohabitation records came into existence as a way for former slaves who had lived together as man and wife prior to and during the Civil War to receive a formal legal acknowledgment of their marriages. This process became necessary as North Carolina state law had not permitted marriages between slaves.
	African American History Timeline: 1801-1900 1840: Census of 1840, U.S. Population: 17,069,453, Black Population: 2,873,648 (16.1 percent) including 386,293 free African Americans.
	Registrations of Free Negroes and Mulattoes – 1823 - 1864 From the Charles City County Historical Society.
	Freedom's Journal Freedom's Journal, the first African-American owned and operated newspaper published in the US. The Journal was published weekly in New York City from 1827 to 1829. All 103 issues of the Freedom's Journal have been digitized and placed into Adobe Acrobat format.

1850-1900 Records

African American History Timeline: 1851-1900

1850: The American League of Colored Workers, formed in New York City, is the first African American labor union in the United States.

1898: The Spanish-American War begins on April 21. Sixteen regiments of black volunteers are recruited; four see combat in Cuba and the Philippines Five African Americans win Congressional Medals of Honor during the war. A number of black officers command troops for the first time.

Virginia, Freedmen's Bureau Letters, 1865-1872

Virginia's early African-American family records now online.

Post 1900 Records

	African American History Timeline: 1901-2000 1913: On April 11, the Woodrow Wilson administration initiates the racial segregation of work places, rest rooms and lunch rooms in all federal offices across the nation. 2000: Census of 2000, U.S. population: 281,421,906, Black population: 34,658,190 (12.3 percent)
	African American History Timeline: 2001- 2008: On November 4, Barrack Obama of Illinois, the only sitting African American U.S. Senator, is elected President of the United States. Obama wins the election decisively and becomes the first African American elected to this office.

Other Records

	African American Research Flight to Freedom: Slavery and the Underground Railroad in Maryland
	AfriGeneas AfriGeneas is a site devoted to African American genealogy. It is also an African Ancestry research community featuring the AfriGeneas mail list, state specific African Ancestry mail lists, AfriGeneas message boards and AfriGeneas daily and weekly genealogy chats.
	Search ARC African American Online Records at the National Archives - The Archival Research Catalog (ARC) is the online catalog of NARA
	African American History in the West The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed - An Online Reference Guide to African American History by Professor Quintard Taylor, University of Washington
	Black Wall Street Slave Records - Slavery Project - Slave Records By County - Freedmen's Bureau - Slave Narratives & more.
	Fredericksburg Free Negro and Slave Record Search Engine Historic Court Records consists of extracts, transcripts and indices of slavery records in repository in the Fredericksburg Circuit Court, Fredericksburg, Virginia.
	On-line search for county Negro & Mulatto Registers This collection contains the Clark County register used to record those of African ancestry who resided in Indiana prior to November 1, 1851. The register lists the name, age, description, place of birth and residence, date of registration, and names of witnesses who verified the established residence of each African American living in the state.