October 2, 2011 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Virginia Historical Society has created an online database, Unknown No Longer, of the names of more than 1,800 slaves from its manuscript collection, a number the Richmond organization thinks will grow to the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands over time.
The group’s more than eight million documents, including wills, estate records, plantation account books, and letters, are a rich source for people interested in African-American history and genealogy, but they are not easily accessible, says Nelson D. Lankford, vice president for programs at the Virginia Historical Society.
With a $100,000 grant from Dominion Resources, a power company in the state, and its foundation, the historical society’s archivists have started to comb through the records for the names of people who were enslaved, along with additional information in some cases, such as family connections, occupations, and birth and death dates.
Says Mr. Lankford: “The magic of this is that we’re lifting these names from dusty documents that are very obscure, people who toiled in obscurity and left a faint trace in the records, and now they’re in a database online and anybody anywhere in the world with an Internet connection can search.”
