Indexes and Databases
1754 Massachusetts Slave Census
In 1754, Governor William Shirley had ordered that an enumeration of all slaves, both male and female, over the age of sixteen be completed by each town. This included Maine since it was still part of Massachusetts.
Black Slave Revolts
This multimodal interactive map cites the chronology, frequency, and locations of revolts by enslaved Africans and African descendents, illustrating that armed resistance took place from the onset of the European encounter including numerous attempts by victims to halt the trade in African people. The map markers incorporate descriptions, including persons involved and results, as displayed through video; audio; images; and text to contribute to the scholarship on resistance to enslavement. The digital revolt map can be used to consider a holistic approach to slavery including conditions; laws, particularly those on punishments; “thinking about revolting;” relationships within the enslaved community; and the role of international events that influenced the mobilization of African people.
Book of Negroes
United States, Inspection Roll of Negroes. Search the records of Black Loyalists evacuated by the British from New York in 1783 after defeat in the American War of Independence.
Boston Marine Insurance Company Records
1797-1839. This collection consists of records of the Boston Marine Insurance Company, including correspondence, accounts, and 65 volumes of financial, legal, investment, and policy records, as well as letters by company presidents. Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street Boston, MA 02215.
Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade
Explore the data and life stories on Enslaved.org and read articles on data-driven research about the lives of the enslaved in the Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation. Michigan State University and the University of Maryland
The Freedmen’s Bureau Online
Records from the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands. Searchable databases of the Bureau’s records from the War Department, 1865.
Freedomonthemove.org
“Freedom On The Move: Rediscovering the Stories of Self-Liberating People” is a searchable database of fugitives of American Slavery. It is a collaboration of Cornell University, along with the University of Alabama, University of New Orleans, University of Kentucky, and Ohio State University.
Indigenousslavery.org
The Database of Indigenous Slavery in the Americas (DISA), is a community-centered database project that seeks to document as many instances of indigenous enslavement in the Americas between 1492 and 1900 (and beyond, where relevant).
Lost Friends of New Orleans
Advertisements of the Southwestern Christian Advocate. This searchable database provides access to more than 2,500 advertisements that appeared in the Advocate between November 1879 and December 1900.
Native Northeast Portal
The Native Northeast Research Collaborative’s Native Northeast Portal contains primary source materials by, on, or about Northeast Indians from repositories around the world. Documents are digitized, transcribed, annotated, reviewed by the appropriate contemporary descendant community representatives, and brought together with scholarly annotations and academic/community commentary into one edited interactive digital collection. The Portal currently contains thousands of records associated with scores of Native communities.
New York Slavery Records Index
Records of Enslaved Persons and Slave Holders in New York from 1525 though the Civil War.
The Prince Project
The Prince Project is a database of over 1700 people of color who were in Maine prior to 1800. It is not available online. For information, please contact Vana Carmona at vanacarmona@gmail.com.
Shipindex.org
ShipIndex.org tells you which books, magazines, and online resources mention the vessels you’re researching. 153,649 entries in the free database, 3,159,372 entries available with premium access.
Slave Societies Digital Archives
The Slave Societies Digital Archive (formerly Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies), hosted at Vanderbilt University, preserves endangered ecclesiastical and secular documents related to Africans and African-descended peoples in slave societies. (Note: This is not a searchable online database.)
Stolen Relations
Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas is a community-centered database project housed at Brown University that seeks to document enslaved and unfree Indigenous people throughout time all across the Americas in order to promote greater understanding of the historical circumstances and ongoing trauma of settler colonialism.
Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database has information on almost 36,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Featured Regional Historical Recovery Projects
African Americans in Essex County: An Annotated Guide
This report detailing how and where to locate resources for sharing honest and inclusive Black history within Essex County archives was produced by Dr. Kabria Baumgartner and Dr. Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello for Salem Maritime National Historic Site. It follows from a two-year project, funded by the National Park Service and administered by the Organization of American Historians.
Cape Ann Slavery and Abolition
The Cape Ann Slavery and Abolition website aims to reveal the hidden history of enslaved people, slaveowners, slave traders and sea captains, business owners involved in, or benefitting from, the slave trade on Cape Ann, and to tell their stories. Using contemporary research and primary sources, we present evidence-based information that has been overlooked, suppressed, or erased from local historical narratives.
Finding Freeman/s: Wisdom for Contemporary Cornwall From Its 19th Century Black & Indigenous Neighbors
This 2022 exhibition at the Cornwall (CT) Historical Society presented findings from citizen researchers Ann Schillinger and Ryan Bachman on the lives of Naomi Freeman, an early free Black resident, and her husband, a formerly enslaved Black man, Obadiah, who owned property in Cornwall starting in 1828. They also outlined a community of other African American and Indigenous Cornwall residents whose stories had up to that point not been reflected in contemporary histories.
Free and Enslaved People of Color in Marblehead Online Database
Discover the stories of the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color who lived and worked in Marblehead, Massachusetts through the 19th century thanks to this database presented in an accessible narrative form.
Hidden Brookline
Building public understanding of the history of slavery and of freedom in Brookline, Massachusetts. Established in 2006, the Hidden Brookline Committee brings together people who want to work on existing projects or create new programming.
Lost Friends of New Orleans
Advertisements of the Southwestern Christian Advocate. This searchable database provides access to more than 2,500 advertisements that appeared in the Advocate between November 1879 and December 1900.
Maine Vessels in the Illicit Slave Trade
Research findings by scholar Kate McMahon of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture about Maine vessels in the slave trade from 1855-1865.
A Matter of Truth: The Struggle for African Heritage & Indigenous People Equal Rights in Providence, RI (1620-2020)
A comprehensive analysis of the role the City of Providence and State of Rhode Island played in supporting a “separate and unequal” existence for African heritage, Indigenous and people of color. Please contact RIBHS at origins@riblackheritage.org if you would like a print version.
Our Beloved Kin: Remapping a New History of King Philip’s War
This website is a digital companion to the book Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War, available in print and e-book versions from Yale University Press.
People Not Property: Stories of Slavery in the Colonial North
Despite the fact that slavery was crucial to the economic development of the American colonies, the history of enslaved people in the North has long been neglected. Historic Hudson Valley shares stories of family and separation, work and community, negotiation, resistance, and perseverance.
The Prince Project
The Prince Project’s mission is to uncover the role of enslavement in Maine’s early past and share the research in an effort to help rewrite inaccurate historical narratives, and better educate people.
The Public History Project
The Public History Project is an interdisciplinary research consortium based within the bio-region that is home to New York and New Jersey. PHP maps how the connections between dispossession, enslavement, migration, and extractive trade networks have led to historical and current ecological crises. They share findings through publicly accessible archives, intentional gatherings, K-20 curricular development and media projects.
Remembering the Brooks Family
A personal story of four generations of people in southern New Hampshire and Vermont, told by descendant Ray Brooks and archaeologist Gail Golec. Presented by Partnership of Historic Bostons.
Recovering Black History in New England: A Workshop
Led by groundbreaking local historians Jennifer Carroll and Michelle Stahl to show you how you, too, can investigate the lives of Black members of your community. Presented by Partnership of Historic Bostons.
Slave Births: Monmouth County (NJ) Records
Birth records between 1804-1848 from the country records. Searchable database.
Unseen New England: Re-envisioning Black Presence in Early American Art
Presentation by Emelie Gevalt, American Folk Art Museum curator and curator of the superb exhibition Unnamed Figures, exploring the presence – or absence – of Black New Englanders and the choices made by artists and sitters alike. Presented by Partnership of Historic Bostons.
Warren Middle Passage Project
The Warren Middle Passage Project is an all-volunteer group researching the history of the slave trade and enslavement in Warren, Rhode Island. Our goal is to document that history, erect a marker that tells the history of Warren’s involvement in the slave trade and the people enslaved within our Town, build a memorial to those Africans who died or were enslaved, identify those people who were enslaved here as well as their descendants and recognize the crucial role African-Americans played in the building of Warren, Rhode Island and the United States.
Witness Stones Project
Through research, education, and civic engagement, the Witness Stones Project, Inc. seeks to restore the history and to honor the humanity and contributions of the enslaved individuals who helped build our communities.
York Historical Records | York, ME
The York Historical Records page represents a collaboration between Lynn Osgood, York’s current Town Clerk, and James Kences, Town Historian. This project stems from the belief that access to the town records should be available to everyone seeking the knowledge. The site contains records starting in 1646, as well as searchable spreadsheets and several historical briefs compiled by Kences.
Sites to Visit
African American Heritage Sites in Salem, MA | Salem was founded as a port, and for its first two centuries, the economic prosperity of the town was tied to the slave culture of the British Atlantic, through transportation of slaves or support of the slave economy through the supply of dried cod as a protein source for the slaves on Caribbean plantations. As early as 1638, the first enslaved Africans were brought into the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the Salem-owned vessel Desire.
African American Trail Project
The African American Trail Project is a collaborative public history initiative housed at Tufts University. Originally inspired by the scholarship of Tufts Professor Gerald R. Gill (1948-2007) and driven by faculty and student research, this project maps African American and African-descended public history sites across greater Boston, and throughout Massachusetts. The African American Trail Project aims to develop African American historical memory and intergenerational community, placing present-day struggles for racial justice in the context of greater Boston’s historic African American, Black Native, and diasporic communities.
Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire | From the docks of Portsmouth, where merchants engaged in the trans-Atlantic slave trade unloaded their cargo, to the northern border with Canada where many escaping captives found their first moment of freedom, the Granite State holds a multitude of stories that mark the milestones of its complex history.
David Ruggles Center for History & Education
The David Ruggles Center for History and Education honors the contributions made to the abolition of slavery by courageous individuals in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts. The location in the village of Florence within Northampton commemorates those who came here to challenge slavery, live in freedom, and establish a community based on principles of race, gender, class, and religious equality. DRC seeks to educate and inspire visitors to possibilities in the present by sharing these powerful voices from the past.
God’s Little Acre: America’s Colonial African Cemetery
A burial ground in Newport, RI, recognized as having possibly the oldest and largest surviving collection of markers of enslaved and free Africans, the earliest of whom were born in the late 1600s.
Hidden History of Black Boston/New England
Led by Joel Mackall, the tour covers the formation and rich heritage of Boston’s Black communities.
Portland Freedom Trail
A map and brochure for a self-guided walking tour of key sites around the city of Portland, Maine pertaining to slavery, abolition, and the lives of prominent Black residents.
Providence, RI African American Walking Tour – Stages of Freedom
Led by Ray Rickman, the tour explores Providence’s oldest neighborhood and the African Americans who lived their varied lives there.
Rhode Island Slave History Medallions
The Rhode Island Slave History Medallion organization is a statewide public awareness program committed to marking those historic sites connected to the history of slavery in Rhode Island.
The Robbins House
The Robbins House is a 544 sq. ft. historic early 19th century house formerly inhabited by the first generation of descendants of formerly enslaved African American Revolutionary War veteran Caesar Robbins, and by self-emancipated Jack Garrison. This house is one of the only known historic sites commemorating the legacy of a previously enslaved Revolutionary War veteran.
Royall House and Slave Quarters | In the eighteenth century, the Royall House and Slave Quarters was home to the largest slaveholding family in Massachusetts and the enslaved Africans who made their lavish way of life possible. Today, the Royall House and Slave Quarters is a museum whose architecture, household items, archaeological artifacts, and programs bear witness to intertwined stories of wealth and bondage, set against the backdrop of America’s quest for independence.
Samuel Harrison Society
It is the mission of the Samuel Harrison Society to restore and preserve the formerly enslaved Reverend Harrison’s homestead in Pittsfield, MA; use it as a place to teach the values embodied in his noble life, his enduring beliefs, his extraordinary writings; and to define a chapter in the story of us as a people by providing greater insight into African-American history.
Upper Housatonic Valley African American Heritage Trail
The African American Heritage Trail encompasses 29 Massachusetts and Connecticut towns in the Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area, and celebrates African Americans in the region who played pivotal roles in key national and international events, as well as ordinary people of achievement.
Vermont African American Heritage Trail
The African American Heritage Trail takes you to Vermont museums and cultural sites where exhibits, films, tours and personal explorations illuminate the lives of African Americans for whom the Green Mountain State was part of their identity.
Exhibitions
Long Road to Freedom: African-Americans in the Old Colony – Plymouth, MA
A June 2006 exhibition at Pilgrim Hall Museum
A Vanished Port: Middletown & the Caribbean, 1750-1824
This exhibition portrays a major New England port during the heyday of the West Indies trade, from the luxurious life of Middletown’s merchants to the suffering of enslaved workers in the sugar monoculture of the English Caribbean.
Finding Native Americans in the Historical Record
The dominant narrative of Newport, Rhode Island’s development ignores the presence of Native peoples once the British colonists arrived. But Native people remained, as do the descendants of the people who left their mark in the record. Both deserve recognition.
New England Colleges & Universities Studying Slavery
Universities Studying Slavery
Universities Studying Slavery (USS) is dedicated to organizing multi-institutional collaboration as part of an effort to facilitate mutual support in the pursuit of common goals around the core theme of “Universities Studying Slavery.” USS additionally allows participating institutions to work together as they address both historical and contemporary issues dealing with race and inequality in higher education and in university communities as well as the complicated legacies of slavery in modern American society. USS hosts semi-annual meetings to discuss strategies, collaborate on research, and learn from one another.
A Racial History of Amherst College
The result of the formation of a Steering Committee in late 2020 tasked with coordinating and disseminating research on the college’s racial past, including slaveholding and capital accumulation based on slavery.
Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery
Announced by Harvard President Larry Bacow in November 2019, Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery is a presidential initiative which seeks to uncover and understand the history of Harvard University’s relationship to slavery, as well as slavery’s continuing legacy within the Harvard community today.
‘It was not expected’ that MIT Founder Owned Slaves in 1850
Living Lab Radio, By Heather Goldstone & Elsa Partan • Feb 19, 2018
Trinity College – The Primus Project
The project explores the ways Trinity College—the institution and individuals associated with it—engaged with systems of slavery and white supremacy.
Tufts University – Slavery, Colonialism, & their Legacies
The Slavery, Colonialism, and their Legacies at Tufts University (SCL) initiative illuminates the history of slavery and colonialism within and beyond Tufts, shaping the future of how universities study their institutional pasts.
The Yale and Slavery Research Project
In 2020 Yale launched the Yale and Slavery Research Project to study the institution’s historical involvement with slavery. The discoveries made by the project’s historians and scholars were made public and addressed by Yale throughout the research process. You will find on this website much of what the team learned. You can also read the full account in Yale and Slavery: A History, by Sterling Professor of History David W. Blight with the Yale and Slavery Research Project.
Centers
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University
Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University
Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University
Archival Collections
African Americans and the End of Slavery in Massachusetts
Massachusetts Historical Society brings together historical manuscripts and rare published works that serve as a window upon the lives of African Americans in Massachusetts from the late seventeenth century through the abolition of slavery under the Massachusetts Constitution in the 1780s.
Maine Memory Network
Maine Memory Network is a project of the Maine Historical Society and provides access to thousands of historical items, stories, and exhibits from organizations and individuals across Maine. Includes collections on Slavery in Maine and Maine Anti-slavery efforts, as well as lesson plans on Black and Wabanaki Studies.
Maine State Archives – African American History of the 18th & 19th Centuries
This collection highlights documents from the Maine State Archives that tell the story of African-American history in Maine during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Massachusetts Historical Society
Founded in 1791, the Massachusetts Historical Society is an invaluable resource for archives, documents, and artifacts.
Massachusetts Historical Society Antislavery Resources
Antislavery images, the case for ending slavery, Massachusetts in the Civil War 1861-62, Boston Abolitionists 1831-65, African Americans and the end of slavery in Massachusetts, the long road to freedom.
The Medford Slave Trade Letters – Medford, MA
The “Medford Slave Trade Letters” as they were called in their original accession are a series of letters spanning between January of 1759 and October of 1765. A six-year correspondence between Timothy Fitch, a merchant and Medford resident, and his employee named Peter Gwinn. The letters are a direct and local link to the trafficking and sale of enslaved human beings from Africa. The letters originate from the Hall family of Medford and are housed at the Medford Historical Society & Museum.
Cape Cod Archival Collections
The Provincetown History Preservation Project
Assessing and digitizing documents in the town’s care to create greater access to valuable and significant historical information and to ensure that important documents related to Provincetown’s history will be preserved for informational and research purposes today and in the future.
Sturgis Library Town and Local History Collection
Sturgis Library’s special collections include materials in the Kittredge Maritime Collections, the Lothrop Genealogy & Local History Collections, and archival collections of maritime, genealogical, and historical importance. The Walter E. Babbitt Research Collection (1745-1977) contains Babbitt’s research materials relating to Brewster Sea Captains.
Truro Historical Society
Dedicated to the history of Truro, Massachusetts and the greater Outer Cape, the Truro Historical Society, Highland House Museum, and Cobb Archive maintain rotating exhibits and community enrichment programs. The organization has voiced its commitment to racial justice and decolonial museum practices, and many of the Cobb Archive records have been digitized through Digital Commonwealth.
In the Media
Forgotten History: How The New England Colonists Embraced The Slave Trade
NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross and author Wendy Warren • June 21, 2016
How Profits from Opium Shaped 19th-Century Boston (Part I)
WBUR By Martha Bebinger •
As the Opium Trade Boomed in the 1800s, Boston Doctors Raised Addiction Concerns (Part II)
WBUR By Martha Bebinger •
Maine’s Role in the Slave Trade: Little-Known History of Slave Trading in New England
Maine Calling show on Maine Public, featuring Dr. Kate McMahon, Center for the Study of Global Slavery, National Museum of African American History & Culture and Dr. Meadow Dibble, Atlantic Black Box. Originally broadcast January 21, 2020.
MassMoments
Mass Moments is a daily almanac of Massachusetts history. Subscribe to receive an email of the moment of the day.
The Story of Newport: An African heritage perspective
Traces the history of Newport from the arrival of the slave ship Sea Flower in 1696 to the present.
Slavery and the Journal — Reckoning with History and Complicity
Part of a series in which the New England Journal of Medicine reckons with its perpetuation of racism and bias.
Historical Recovery Projects Beyond New England
Gold Chains: The Hidden History of Slavery in California | ACLU NorCal
The public education campaign Gold Chains: The Hidden History of Slavery in California seeks to uncover and investigate the often under-reported history of slavery and abuses against Indigenous communities in California. In addition to exposing these threads in California state history, Gold Chains works to highlight the resilient, tenacious individual voices of African Americans and Native Americans who sought justice and equality.
ReImagine Lefferts
In 2021, the the Prospect Park Alliance in Brooklyn, NY launched this initiative to re-envision the mission and programming of this house museum to focus on exploring the lives, resistance and resilience of the Indigenous people of Lenapehoking, whose unceded ancestral lands the park and house rests upon, and the Africans enslaved by the Lefferts family. By focusing on stories of resistance, resilience, empowerment and joy, while also recognizing the legacies of dispossession, enslavement and oppression, the Alliance seeks to create a safe space for engaging with our collective past as well as contemporary issues affecting our communities today.