In today’s blog post, I want to share some new material available in Virginia Untold, the Library’s digital project featuring records of enslaved and free Black and Multiracial people.
This spring I traveled to three different Virginia localities to pick up and return “Free Negro Registers” to digitize for our free register project including volumes from Charlotte, Louisa, and Nelson counties. After scanning the registers here at the Library of Virginia, I traveled back to each locality to return the records and deliver digital images to the clerk. Some of these registers are now in Virginia Untold, while others are available on our crowdsourced transcription site, From the Page.
- Charlotte County (Va.) Register of Free Negroes, 1794-1865
- Louisa County (Va.) Bonds Recorded and Register of Free Negroes, 1754-1837
- Nelson County (Va.) Register of Free Negroes and Affidavits for the Valuation of Formerly Enslaved Persons, 1853-1867
Nelson County Courthouse
Nelson County Free Register
Just a few weeks ago, I traveled to Northumberland County to pick up two volumes of free register books documenting the years 1803-1858. Our digitization staff is currently working to scan these volumes, so be on the lookout for this locality soon.
In addition to trips around the state, we’ve worked this spring to get several other volumes available through Virginia Untold including the localities we digitized last Fall:
- Fluvanna County (Va.) Register of Free Negroes, 1851-1864
- Mecklenburg County (Va.) Register of Free Negroes, 1809-1841
- Mecklenburg County (Va.) Register of Free Negroes, 1841-1865
- Montgomery County (Va.) Register of Free Negroes and Mulattoes, 1823-1847
- Montgomery County (Va.) Register of Free Negroes and Mulattoes, 1848-1863
- Northampton County (Va.) Register of Free Negroes, 1853-1861
- Orange County (Va.) List of Free Negroes, 1803-1850
- Pulaski County (Va.) Register of Free Negroes, 1851-1864
Northumberland County Free Register
I performed light conservation on the first volume of the Northumberland County free register in order to stabilize it for digitization, but it requires more intensive care for long term preservation. That’s where my colleague and local records consulting archivist Tracy Harter comes in to support the clerks in applying for conservation grants.
When I last checked Virginia Untold, I was delighted to learn that we now have a total of 87 “Free Negro Registers” available through the project website. We’ve added nearly 40 volumes to the original set of “Free Negro Registers” in our collections that we digitized as a part of an NHPRC grant completed in Spring 2023. They are not completely indexed, but we are getting there with new volunteers joining us all the time. Since we first launched the “Free Registers” collection on From the Page in March 2022, we’ve indexed 72 registers equaling approximately 12,500 pages with over 47,000 names. You can help us index even more pages from these registers by signing up for a free account on From the Page and then navigating to Virginia Untold: Free Registers (indexing).
Volume 2 of the Louisa County Register and Bond Book
Close Up of Louisa County Register
Statistics we’ve collected from both Google Analytics and Primo (our library catalog layer) reveal that the “Free Negro Registers” collection is regularly in the top five collections accessed by users when searching Virginia Untold. In June, the Carroll County Register of Free Negroes and Mulattoes and Election Record, 1846-1895 was requested 77 times and the Arlington County (Va.) Register of Free Negroes, 1797-1841 was requested 63 times. We compare these figures with requests for other record types that are frequently less than ten times in a month or quarter. This makes sense if you think about it: these records contain hundreds of names in a single digital object, potentially making them very useful for many different types of users. Similarly, Cohabitation Registers are also a frequently accessed record type. This is good information for us—it supports using resources to finish this project and encourages us to think about similar records to digitize in the future.
Folks often ask me, “what about [my locality’s] register?” It’s disheartening to learn that many registers were lost to fire, theft, or other types of damage over the years. Some were known to exist up until several years ago; they were microfilmed sometime in the 1970s-1990s, but now, the physical volume is nowhere to be found. For those localities, we plan to digitize the images from the microfilm. If you’re researching free Black or Multiracial ancestors, we also suggest looking at the minute or order books for a locality to see if the clerk wrote down any registration details alongside other daily activities of the court. In some localities, the clerk never recorded registrations in a separate register. Instead, he just copied down registration entries in the court order book as another court transaction of the day. We believe this to be the case for Richmond City.
I created this map using Pixlr to track our progress on the Free Register project and note what is left for us to digitize. We recently ticked Northumberland County off the list! While we’re quite proud of the progress shown by those localities in yellow, it’s hard to ignore the localities in white which represent those without an extant register. How will we support research on free Black people in those localities? We’re working on the answer.
We’ve been digitizing this set of records for about four years, and I am still shocked and intrigued by the mere glimpses into the lives of free Black Virginians. Allow me to share just a few that I’ve run across in recent days while indexing them on From the Page.
Malinda Russell, only 25 years old, traveled from Washington County, Tennessee, to be registered in Montgomery County, Virginia. These two locations are some-150 miles apart. Travel would have taken days. Was she migrating towards family? Looking for better living and working conditions? Or trying to get away from something in Tennessee? It would be interesting to research the registration laws and records from that state to find out more about Malinda Russell’s journey.
In 1863, Spencer Bright had to return to the Montgomery County court to have a new copy of his registration made because it was “taken from him by the enemy while in the Kanawha Valley.” The registration entry does not explain how Bright did so, but he apparently provided satisfactory evidence that this was in fact the case and he was not a fugitive from slavery. His previous registration on file at the courthouse probably helped his cause. Had Bright been requisitioned to Public Works during the war? What did a Union solider want with his registration? The registration entry only provides so many clues.
In Pulaski County, the clerk recorded not only the height of each individual but their weight. We investigated a possible measuring device for height in a previous blog, but do these Pulaski County entries indicate the clerk was also using a scale to further subject each person to scrutiny? One entry records Benjamine Franklin registered at “one hundred and sixty nine pounds,” a figure that feels too exact to have been estimated. Not every person was recorded with a weight measurement but the ones who were given a weight were all indicated as men.
Perhaps some of our readers remember learning the story of Rachel Findley. Rachel and her family members were enslaved illegally and taken to Wythe County before they could sue for freedom. Relatives with the surname “Findley” are recorded in the Pulaski County register as having been born as free in Wythe County. Charlotte Findly and her children are also recorded. In 1858, Charlotte was described as “having obtained her freedom many years since by suit in Wythe County.” While Rachel fought for freedom in Powhatan, Charlotte fought for freedom in Wythe.
There are a few more new records in Virginia Untold as well. See the recent social media post about the “Gladwin Record” which volunteers helped us index this spring. There are other records available at the Library such as this that document census numbers during the Freedmen’s Bureau administration. We are looking to add those records to Virginia Untold in the coming year. Additionally, a set of church records documenting the biracial history of Cumberland Baptist Church is fully indexed and now available in Virginia Untold. Big thanks to The Life Church in Richmond for hosting us on one of their 5th Sunday Outreach volunteer days. Thirty-two individuals participated in this transcribe-a-thon and thanks to them this record now has a full transcription in Virginia Untold. We’ve got our eye on a few other church records that document such a storied history of Black and white congregants worshipping under the same roof. Stay tuned for what’s next!
