Genealogy - Trace Your Roots

Trace your lineage and find your Ancestors.

It's very important for Black Americans to work on their family tree and discover Ancestors. Doing so strengthens your ethnic pride and ethnic identity, and it will be helpful to have the records on hand when reparations time gets here! It's a common misconception that Black Americans can't trace their lineage and that's a myth. I have traced my Ancestry past the 1700s. Keep reading for how to get started and helpful sites to help you discover Ancestors.

HOW TO GET STARTED - How to do your own Genealogy for Black Americans

Step 1

Go to www.Ancestry.com or you can go to www.Familysearch.org and sign up and make an account. Ancestry offers a free trial for one month and Family Search is completely free.

Step 2

After you have made an account start you will then add yourself as the first person of the family tree. After that then you will add your parents and grandparents. Also include Aunties and Uncles. (You can add cousins also) Add as many people as you know.

Step 3

After you have added the family members you know, its now time to do research and ask questions. You can start by asking your eldest grandparent OR the eldest person in your family. Ask them for names of Grandparents, Uncles/Aunties/Cousins that you may not have known. If you can't do that its okay, keep reading.

Now for the fun part, actually researching you to find your Ancestors. Ancestry and FamilySearch keep census records, birth/death certificates, tax records and many more. They also have Slave records and freedman records and Dawes rolls.

Step 4

When you have found a new Ancestor add them to your family tree. A lot of times the records will include their kids, spouse, their parents and sometimes even other family members so be sure to add them all to your tree. Whenever you are done researching for the day be sure to save your tree. Continue reading down below for more information and websites to help you discover your lineage.

A few websites to help you discover Ancestors/Records

To see what information the census takers took every ten years and to get facts about each census go to: https://www.archives.gov/research/census you will see the actual records on Ancestry or Familysearch.org

To see the names/ages of slaves and their captors. And to also see when and where they were embarked and disembarked go to: https://www.slavevoyages.org/ This shows records for Intra-American and Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Example: I have an Ancestor that was taken from Kentucky and shipped to New Orleans, Louisiana in the 1700s. Slave voyages showed me that and provided the ship name.

I am providing this website because a lot of Black Americans have family/Ancestors from Mississippi. This website shows Census records from 1860-1930 by county: https://mississippigenealogy.com/census

To search the Dawes Rolls go to: https://www.okhistory.org/research/dawes

To search gravesites to find birth and death dates for an Ancestor go to: https://www.findagrave.com/ or go to: https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/collection/2221801

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