Finding the Names, Volume One, Installment 8: New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1821 (Continued)

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The eighth installment of Finding the Names, Volume One — our name-by-name transcription of the slave ship manifests filed at the port of New Orleans, taken directly from the original records at the National Archives.

In this installment: 562 entries (555 of them named) on 54 manifests and documents, Roll 1 images 850–969 — the inward manifests of 1821, summer into fall. 165 pages, 6x9, large print. With Installments 1–7, the project now holds 3,103 entries.

What the papers themselves say: The brig Brazillian carried 106 people out of Norfolk, and against entry 89 the clerk wrote one word — Elizabeth, age one, died on the passage; the inspector recorded her too: "Elizabeth one year old missing, the Capt. states to have Died on the Passage, the rest agree." Stephen, 30, stands in the brig Intelligence's table with "dead" beside his name. On the ship Wm. & Henry, the inspector found everyone correct "with the Exception of Charles Brown who calls himself James." Jim Marshall's entry reads "Runaway, not on board," and the inspector wrote that he had called for Jim frequently and never seen him. Among the slave manifests are people the law could not quite call slaves: Patsy Ash, 11, marked "(indentured)"; John Runlet, 16, whose oath strikes "Slave" and writes "an indentured servant"; and three "indented Servants" on one Hollon manifest. A Petersburg list of thirty — twenty-eight of them children — carries surnames of their own: Richardson, Cocke, Fulcher, Bradley, Suttles, Roper, Hatcher, Weaver. And a 26-year-old man shipped for A. Dick of New Orleans is entered under a name that needs no comment: George Washington.

Art frontispiece: David Drake's signed poem jar, 1858 — Drake, "Dave the Potter," was enslaved in South Carolina and inscribed his own verse on his stoneware. The Metropolitan Museum of Art; CC0.

Every word was transcribed by hand from the National Archives' own scans: Records of the U.S. Customs Service, Record Group 36, Microfilm Publication M1895, Roll 1 (NAID 173899247). No index and no other book was copied. Names are spelled exactly as the clerks wrote them; uncertain readings are marked [?].

Made to help families find their ancestors. The companion guide and the Complete Set (guide + all installments so far, one download) are also free in this store. Please share freely — that is what it is for.

— Okey and Susan Barker, Trails End, Tiger Mountain, Oklahoma