Finding the Names — Installment 49 (Roll 6: New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1831) — FREE

Finding the Names is a free series that transcribes America's slave-trade records from the National Archives' own scans, name by name, so descendants can find their families. Every installment is free — please share it.

Installment 49 — New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1831: Roll 6, images 1,081–1,200, transcribed name by name by hand — 1,220 more entries (1,197 named, 23 unnamed) on 59 manifests, 314 pages, October to December 1831.

The Ship Brunswick's table has been found. In Installment 48, four of her people — Mary, Ann, Kitty, and Charles — had to be entered from a doctor's letter and an inspector's examination, because no table for them appeared in that stretch. Here it is: 149 names, her foot total and certificate agreeing. The four stand on it under their full names — Charles Willinhus, No. 62; Mary Lewis, No. 75; Ann Smith, No. 82; Kitty Johnson, No. 101 — the examiner's X marks still against them. Mary did not travel alone: No. 76 is "Sarah Lewis, her Daughter," aged 2, a child the letter never mentions. The table classes Mary "mulatto" where the letter called her Black, and gives Charles as 19 where the letter said 19½; both readings stand, as written. Because the series counts entries as written, the four are counted in both installments — once from the letter that landed them, once from the table that shipped them.

Two great permissions close their accounts here. The brig United States' Norfolk permission, printed in Installment 48, covered 145 persons, but only 44 could be found on the sheets filmed there. Her remaining sheet is in this installment: 101 names, water-stained, under the same master, Henry C. Bell, and the same date — 44 + 101 = 145, to the person. The schooner Industry's packet does the same trick in reverse: her docket says 135 and her sheets, scattered across two installments, name exactly 135 — while her own permission says 134.

The brig Ann & Leah reconciles by striking: 91 numbered lines, five of them Normans struck through as withdrawn — "Five persons withdrawn, of the Name of Norman" — leaving 86, her certificate's number exactly. And at her New Orleans examination, "No 67 (Harriet Cornish) found in bed, said to have delivered of a Child last night." The baby is entered nowhere on the manifest; the child is entered here from the examination note, unnamed, as the Ilsley's child was in Installment 44.

On the schooner Lafayette, the examiner corrects the list: "No 105 Edmund (Child) answers to Manda Jane — aged 2 years" — one child, two names, both printed. The sloop Signette's papers disagree three ways — foot total "Seventeen," certificate nineteen, landing permission "twenty eight Slaves" — under two vessel names, Signette and Signal; and on the Signal later in the installment, the examiner excepts "No 11. Female not on board — Rachel," where the table's No. 11 is a boy, Richd Gross: Rachel was expected, did not sail, and no table here bears her name. The schooner Louisiana's permission counts her 32 written lines as "Thirty two Persons," though four lines are "& Child" lines and 36 people sailed. The Magnolia's certificate says 132; her sheets yield 131. The brig Ajax stands 42 names with no oath or certificate anywhere in the installment. And on the faint schooner Mobile table, 60 lines are footed "56" under a certificate of 55, with a man of 36 entered at 7 feet tall — as written.

Includes a searchable CSV name list of all 1,220 entries (name, vessel, age, shipper, and more). Honest about gaps: illegible and conflicting entries are flagged, never silently fixed.

With Installments 1–49 the series now holds 29,573 transcribed entries. Start with the free guide, "Finding the Names," and the free Complete Set, which gathers everything so far in one download.

— Okey and Susan Barker, Trails End