RLP 370: Tracing the Enslaved in the 1900 U.S. Census and Enslaved.org Project

Nicole (2s):
This is Research Like a Pro Episode : Tracing the Enslaved in the 1900 U.S. Census and Enslaved.org Project. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases.

Nicole (43s):
Let’s go. Today’s episode is sponsored by Newspapers.com. Hi everyone. Welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (51s):
Hi Nicole. How are you doing?

Nicole (53s):
I’m doing well. I’ve been researching all morning, So I having a fun time. How about you?

Diana (58s):
You’re in your happy place. Well, I have been researching a lot too this week and having so much fun and I am really thankful for AI tools because I’ve been using Full Text Search to find deeds and court records and then I’ve been using Google AI Studio to transcribe them and then I’ve been using my project in Claude to create citations and abstracts, so, to put right into my research logs. So it’s been so fun to have some assistance, you know, via AI to help me get all of this done so much quicker and better.

Nicole (1m 35s):
So true. I’ve been doing the same thing this morning. I’ll share quickly what I did. So I’ve been finding deeds and marriage bonds on Full Text Search in Gibson County, Tennessee, and then correlating the identity of that individual with the surname Reeves, with FamilySearch family tree profiles. And so I’ll take like a screenshot of the FamilySearch profile and have ChatGPT summarize the relationships and vital information So I can put that in my research log. Then I can kind of figure out who might belong to my Reeves family and who probably belongs to other Reeves families. It’s been great.

Diana (2m 12s):
Well that’s nice. So you’re getting basically an abstract of the FamilySearch details, like the children and the parents.

Nicole (2m 18s):
Yes.

Diana (2m 19s):
And the births and deaths just from screenshotting that details page?

Nicole (2m 23s):
Exactly. So I use Snagit, which allows you to take over like a moving screenshot to capture the entire page.

Diana (2m 31s):
Aha!

Nicole (2m 31s):
You just get a really big long image as you like, slowly scroll down the page, so that makes it a lot easier. Then I don’t have to do multiple screenshots.

Diana (2m 39s):
That’d be worth this Snagit subscription.

Nicole (2m 43s):
Yeah. I’ve also been using my custom GPT for citations to make citations for the profiles in the tree.

Diana (2m 50s):
Nice.

Nicole (2m 50s):
And I just do a screenshot that includes the URL and the profile, like name, ID number and then the vital data and then it makes a good citation and the first one it made wasn’t very good and so I just said, here’s the way I want it. And then I kept the chat going with like four or five more profiles that I was looking at. And just after I corrected it the first time, it remembered for the next four.

Diana (3m 17s):
Right. I found that same thing. Are you doing this in Claude or ChatGPT?

Nicole (3m 21s):
Right now I’m just doing it in ChatGPT, but I just kind of go back and forth depending on the day.

Diana (3m 27s):
I do too. And sometimes it seems like one is working better than the other. It’s kind of funny.

Nicole (3m 34s):
That’s funny.

Diana (3m 34s):
But I have settled on Google AI Studio for my transcription because it always works better.

Nicole (3m 40s):
Me too.

Diana (3m 40s):
So I think it’s super interesting that that one has come along and is amazing. So however, today it was transcribing a guardian bond from 1808. And so it had written all the S’s as the F. You know how they out looks like an F and it was actually typed and so it just put F’s for everything, you know, an F for successful, F for everything. And so I said replace all the F’s with an S.

Nicole (4m 8s):
That’s so funny. So it was transcribing a typed abstract of a guardian bond?

Diana (4m 13s):
Yeah, well the full bond it was, it was transcribing the bond.

Nicole (4m 17s):
Oh, cool.

Diana (4m 17s):
But it was typed, it was a typed bond.

Nicole (4m 20s):
So they had taken the old bond probably and and typed it and imaged that.

Diana (4m 25s):
So it was a form that they were using in 1808 and

Nicole (4m 29s):
Oh cool.

Diana (4m 30s):
They hand wrote in the names of the people.

Nicole (4m 33s):
That’s neat.

Diana (4m 34s):
And the dates. So it was actually a form, so an old, old form using that tricky F instead of an S for whatever reason

Nicole (4m 45s):
Gemini saw the long S and didn’t recognize because it was a printed format.

Diana (4m 50s):
Right.

Nicole (4m 51s):
It probably hasn’t seen that very often. Yeah, that’s funny.

Diana (4m 55s):
But it was an easy correction.

Nicole (4m 58s):
Yeah.

Diana (4m 59s):
Now it learned something.

Nicole (4m 59s):
Yeah. It’s great to see that Gemini 2.5 pro is so accurate when you access it via Google AI studio.

Diana (5m 7s):
Yeah, it really is. It’s been great. Well that’s fun. It’s fun that we’re both working on our research and using AI and it’s fun to talk about it and share tips and just how it’s progressing as the models get better and as we learn better. Well, let’s do some announcements. Our Research Like a Pro Webinar Series for 2025 continues with our August program, which will be on Tuesday, August 19th at 11:00 AM Mountain. And our presenter is Torhild Shirley. And the title is Tracing Karolius: Norwegian Research on a WWII Evacuee’s Journey. So this is all about Torhild’s ancestor Karolius who was born in northern Norway and he spent most of his adult life in the coal mines on the island of Svalbard during World War II.

Diana (5m 55s):
Germany’s need for coal made Svalbard a targeted area and a dangerous place to live. Operation Gauntlet botched the German plans, and Karolius was evacuated. He never saw his family again. Research in Norway and Scotland revealed more about his life and evacuation. So our topics will be Norway, Norwegian Research, WWII, Operation Gauntlet, Church Records, Census Records, Military Records, Scotland, Archival Research, Svalbard, Store Norske Spitsbergen.

Diana (6m 36s):
And So I’m really excited about this because I love World War II movies and books and stories and this will be so interesting. A little bit about Torhild . She is a native Norwegian, she’s an Accredited Genealogist and a professional, and we work with her on our research team, which we absolutely love. She has over 30 years of research experience and speaks five languages, is fluent at all Scandinavian languages. And she’s additionally comfortable with old gothic handwriting used in those Scandinavian documents and can transcribe and translate documents as needed. So we are thankful to have her on our team and I’m excited to learn from her. Our next study group begins soon, August 27th and registration does end the week before on August 21st.

Diana (7m 18s):
So if you’re on the fence, it’s time to jump in and join us. We are really looking forward to our fall study group and we would like to invite you to join our newsletter that comes out every Monday if you haven’t yet. So you can get direct links to new blog posts and information about our upcoming lectures, any coupon codes we might have for products out there. And then we’re looking forward to the fall and upcoming conferences. Nicole will be presenting at the Association of Professional Genealogists Conference, the Professional Management Conference. This is a virtual conference held September 18th through the 20th, and her topic is Growing Your Online Reach with AI Tools.

Diana (8m 3s):
And then we will both be attending and presenting in the Texas State Genealogical Society conference, which is November 7th through eighth, which is also virtual. So we are looking forward to having some fun educational opportunities coming up in the fall.

Nicole (8m 21s):
Yes, I am. I actually just wrote the syllabus for my Growing Your Online Reach with AI Tools class and I discovered some tools we might try with our business that we haven’t tried yet and and wrote a lot about what we’re already doing with AI tools to help repurpose a lot of our content. So it was fun to think about all the ways AI is helping us be more efficient and be able to get more blog posts done and scheduling Facebook posts for our podcast episodes, things like that. And so that’ll be fun to talk about at the PMC conference.

Diana (8m 58s):
Oh, that’s great.

Nicole (8m 59s):
Well, today we’re talking about tracing enslaved individuals and this process can be very challenging and time consuming. It is challenging because enslaved people typically only had first names until emancipation. And so we hope that as we do the research we can find identified information about them like age and family groupings and we can use records like the 1850 and the 1860 slave schedules. And we also look for records after emancipation like the 1867 Voter Registration. And of course the 1870 census tracing people forward in time can be so challenging because they may have chosen to use a different surname after emancipation or after the censuses.

Nicole (9m 51s):
So they might have taken the enslavers surname at first or maybe after they did that they took a a new surname later. So it’s really essential to use that identifying information of the family groupings and the ages. So two projects were recently highlighted by FamilySearch that can help with this research. And the first is the Enslaved.org project and the other is the 1900 US Census dataset available at FamilySearch.org. This was a collaboration between Michigan State University and FamilySearch International. So the news release says Michigan State University, MSU, and FamilySearch are happy to announce an extensive expansion to MSU’s online collection Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade (Enslaved.org), a project that documents the lives of formerly enslaved individuals of African descent.

Nicole (11m 16s):
The newly expanded collection uses 1900 United States census data to significantly enhance the ability to discover formerly enslaved individuals and their families for genealogical and academic research. This exciting new, free resource can be accessed now at Enslaved.org and FamilySearch.org. So MSU and FamilySearch determined that the 1900 census could have the greatest impact on MSU Enslaved.org initiative because of its potential to identify about 2 million people named in the census who were likely enslaved before emancipation in the United States. So the censuses taken after 1863 are sometimes the first records to include these individuals by name. Well, FamilySearch then worked with Brigham Young University’s Record Linking Lab to identify the individuals in the census, along with links to the original census images on FamilySearch.org and records in the FamilySearch Family Tree. So this is a really cool project.

Diana (11m 51s):
It is. And when I saw the news release, I wanted to go try it out and I had been doing a lot of work on my ancestor, Thomas B Royston who had enslaved up to 16 people on his plantation in Chambers County, Alabama. And I have not been able to find out anything about those individuals despite looking at court records and deeds. I’ve just found no names. I do have their gender and ages from the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules. And I also have a black Royston family who appears on the 1870 census in Chambers County. And so I wondered if I could try to use some of these new resources to learn more about this family.

Diana (12m 38s):
So this family in the 1870 census is, all have the Royston surname and there is Drew who’s age 60, Ann who’s age 50, Susan age 18, Henry age 15, Georgiana age 13, Jason four and Jack three. And so we know that Royston the surname is a clue to the connection, but it doesn’t prove it because it could be that, you know, when someone was emancipated they just took the surname of, you know, an enslaver within the county, somebody who was prominent perhaps that they wanted to take that surname.

Diana (13m 22s):
So we’re not sure if they really were connected. But there is one other piece of evidence that adds strength to the argument that Drew may have been enslaved by Thomas B Royston. So Drew Royston lived right next to the Joseph Slagle household in 1870 per that census. And Joseph had married Thomas B Royston’s oldest daughter, Mary Elizabeth in 1855 in Chambers County. And the 1860 slave schedule shows that Joseph owned one male age 16. So this would not be Drew who was age 60 in 1870. So instead Drew and his household were likely enslaved on the Thomas B Royston plantation.

Diana (14m 9s):
And in 1860 we have the census slave schedule that does show a placeholder that could possibly be him. So the slave schedules are arranged first by age and whether they’re male or female. And so there is a male who’s age 45 and a male age 40. And so that doesn’t exactly correlate to the 1870 census. Drew would have been 50. But we also know that whoever was giving the information about the enslaved individuals may not have known exactly how old they were and the individuals themselves may have not known how old they were.

Diana (14m 51s):
And so we, we use those numbers with ages to get us a general idea. And then going down this list of the 1860 slave schedule, there were two females both age 38, there was a male 35 and a male 23 and a female 23. And then there were the younger people. So we have two females 12, a female eight, a male five, and one three, a female, three and two, and then a male two and a male two. So I don’t know for sure, but it seems to me that this could be several, you know, family groupings with children because they sort of seem to fit into that, that role.

Diana (15m 38s):
But if Drew is the male born in 1815, supposedly 45 in 1860, then his inferred wife Ann could be one of the females born in 1822 and their daughter Susan could be the female born 1852 and Henry the male born 1855 and Georgiana, one of the females born 1857. So it, there does appear to be placeholders for the Drew Royston household. And you know, without more information we can never say for sure, but it does give us a possibility and we always have to keep in mind that it is possible that even if they were the parents of these children, they could have been on different plantations and were only able to live together post emancipation.

Diana (16m 32s):
So we obviously need more information, but this could be a start

Nicole (16m 38s):
That’s really neat and it’s cool to see the ages lining up for the children, you know, exactly the same as you would’ve expected for Susan who was 18 in 1870 and then there’s like a female age eight and then Henry was 15 and 1870 and then there’s, in 1860 there’s a male age five and same with Georgiana, 3-year-old female. So she was 13 and 1870 and there was a 3-year-old in the 1860. But yeah, I think it’s easier to keep track of little children’s ages than it is for older individuals who kind of lose track of their age. I mean I know I do that so

Diana (17m 16s):
Right. And that does, I think you are looking at better evidence when you are comparing children to the next 10 years because you’re absolutely right. If you look at a 3-year-old, you’re not going to say, oh they’re probably six, you know, because they’re obviously three, they’re obviously much younger, but,

Nicole (17m 34s):
And it’s easier to remember because it’s more recent history, you know? Oh yeah, they were born, let’s see, three years ago.

Diana (17m 41s):
Yeah,

Nicole (17m 41s):
Well that’s nice. A good correlation between those two censuses and yeah, it would be really neat to know more about the Royston family and that’s such great evidence too that they were living next to this Slagle family. I didn’t know that. So that’s really neat that you can kind of see that neighbor evidence of, yeah, they were living right next to the Royston daughter’s family.

Diana (18m 7s):
Right. And perhaps they were employed still on the, the plantation or the farm that often happened that, you know, for a few years after they would continue working or perhaps, you know, they were farming their own little piece of ground. So it’s hard to know. I wish there were better records and more information because the occupation for Drew is farmhand. So that makes us believe that he was working on a farm. And same with Susan. And interestingly Joseph Slagle, that branch of the family, they do stay in Alabama, whereas Thomas B Royston’s widow after he dies, goes out to Texas with several of the, the younger children.

Diana (18m 53s):
So a whole branch of the family goes out to Texas, but the Slagles are one that stay put in Alabama.

Nicole (19m 3s):
Wow, that’s interesting. The other thing I noticed too with the 1870s census is that Drew and Anne were born in Georgia.

Diana (19m 12s):
Well, and that makes sense because so was Thomas B Royston and I believe he had his enslaved people when he was in Georgia and then brought them with him to Alabama because in the 1840 census he did have, I think maybe that when he had eight enslaved people, he didn’t have quite as many. So that makes sense that they would’ve been born in Georgia. And then the younger children, you know, Susan born Alabama, born 1852, if this is a family group that was kept intact, then he was for sure in Alabama by 1852.

Diana (19m 52s):
So that does make sense. That does correlate the birth with what I know about the migration pattern.

Nicole (20m 1s):
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Nicole (20m 41s):
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Diana (21m 4s):
Well now let’s talk about this 1900 US Census data set that is on FamilySearch. So I thought it would be really interesting to see if it would help me to figure out any more of the black Royston families. And there is no black Royston family that appears in 1880. So I was hoping to be able to trace out the Drew Royston grouping but haven’t been able to do that. But using this filtered data set on FamilySearch, I found a family of John Royston in the 1900 census and they lived in Lafayette Chambers County seat.

Diana (21m 45s):
And after having been there, I know that it’s really supposed to be pronounced differently and I can’t remember what it’s, so anyone listening that’s from the area, I’m sorry I can’t remember how to say it. They have their own unique way of saying that. So was John another of the enslaved people in the Royston plantation born in 1850? There is no perfect match on that 1860 slave schedule, but again, you know, he could have been one of those younger males. There’s one that is five, there’s one that’s three, so you know, who knows or could he have just taken that surname and not be connected at all.

Diana (22m 31s):
But regardless that dataset for the 1900 census does give us that household and we see that it has, they have four children, there’s John and a Harriet Royston, and the children are not found via this specialized 1900 dataset because it only includes those who were born before emancipation. So this was really to help us quickly identify possible candidates for the enslaved. So the 1900 census for John Royston’s family shows him as age 61 and it’s a second marriage. And then Harriet, it would be her first marriage, she’s 35, so he married someone quite a bit younger.

Diana (23m 13s):
And then there’s Frank, who’s 16, Ollie 14, John Junior age 11, and Goodman age nine. So the interesting thing about this 1900 census data set is that the BYU Family History Linking Lab has the volunteers there and they’re students, for the most part, they have been creating profiles from the census on FamilySearch. And so I looked at the profile and I saw that it did need some merging with some duplicates, but I reviewed the records, updated the profile, and you know, this is just a way for people who are trying to figure out their ancestors can have something that will help hopefully help their trace their lineage back to, you know, this family of John and Harriet and then maybe even go further back on their lines.

Nicole (24m 11s):
Okay. Wow. So we don’t know how this family might be related to the other family, but they’re definitely using the surname Royston, so potentially could be other Royston enslaved individuals

Diana (24m 27s):
Potentially. Yeah, it’s, it’s hard to know. And you know, when we’re doing the African American research, we really start with what people know and what stories have been handed down because that can give some big clues. So I found it’s really, really difficult to try to trace a family going forward without stories and without knowing other family names. You know, if we’re working with say a client who’s got a story and they say, yeah, we have in the family these names and these were the aunts and the uncles and that gives you so much more information. But without that it’s, it’s pretty tricky going forward trying to trace people unless they kept using the same names.

Nicole (25m 11s):
Right. Yeah, it makes you wonder if the Royston family that you found on the 1870 census changed their surname, but by 1900 the older individuals would’ve passed away already so that family grouping wouldn’t be expected to be intact anymore. So that is tricky ’cause you’re looking for like Susan Royston maybe got married and then Henry Royston you could try to look for him with the family.

Diana (25m 41s):
Right. And Georgiana, there’s some different, different names, but yeah, as far as Drew and Anne, you know, they possibly died there sometime in that next 30 years until 1900 and or moved away, you know, they could have moved on as well. So yeah, I’m hopeful someday maybe you can solve this, but for right now this is where we’re at.

Nicole (26m 8s):
Alright, well let’s talk about Enslaved.org. So that’s the other part of the, you know, announcement from the FamilySearch News Release. So it sounds like you wanted to search the Enslaved.org database for Royston and see what happened. And there were three Royston entries, but none of them corresponded to any of the Royston family that you’ve researched so far. But it’s good to keep watching this database. I’m sure it will expand as more records are added to it. And when you click on a record at Enslaved.org, it brings up sources such as a deed, probate or petition.

Nicole (26m 49s):
You can also search by gender, age, ethno descriptor, role type, occupation, status, and more. So it is helpful and encouraging to see that there are projects like this out there to help when searching for enslaved individuals. And so hopefully we can continue to see this database grow and it can be more useful as time goes on. And it sounds like you’re going to keep thinking about ways to research the Royston individuals you found, at least they’re now in your research log and we can continue trying to identify them going forward in time and hope that additional evidence will come to light.

Diana (27m 37s):
Absolutely. You know, sometimes we have to put things on the back burner and then something comes along and we can find out more. So I thought it would be fun just to give people an idea about what is at Enslaved.org when you go to it. You can look under data and see some of the different collections that they have. And they have got so many interesting collections, just a couple of them. There’s one called African Burials and Residences in Rio de Janeiro, which is a selection of 4,000 plus entries from registries there. So that’s an interesting one. There’s also an Advertising Gender Slave database, which is from Brazil as well.

Diana (28m 23s):
So this is not just US based, it also has formation on enslaved people from, you know, Jamaica, Brazil, and all sorts of different countries as well. So anyway, it’s, it’s fun to explore and see what’s out there and it’s exciting to see if there is a place where we could do some more research.

Nicole (28m 48s):
Wonderful. Thank you for giving us this information about the Enslaved.org website and then the filtered data set at the 1900 census at FamilySearch.

Diana (29m 0s):
Right, and you know, I think, I’m sure that the people at Enslaved.org are always looking for more collections to be added and so I’m sure if someone out there listening knows of a project that we’d like to add to it, you certainly could contact them because they’re some very specific projects. There’s one where it’s just one county and I believe it’s Georgia and someone has just done an amazing job to go out and get all of the records abstracted and that is in there. So you know, it really is up to us to get these records available, so appreciate someone taking the time to come up with a website where things can be added.

Diana (29m 41s):
Well thanks everyone for listening and we hope that you have a great week and that your research is going well and we will talk to you next time. Bye-bye.

Nicole (29m 53s):
Alright, bye-bye. Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday, subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket.com/newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.