Finding the Names, Volume One, Installment 4: New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1820

By Okey and Susan Barker. FREE — please share.

Installment 4 of a name-by-name transcription of the slave ship manifests filed at the port of New Orleans, made by hand from the original records at the National Archives (Records of the U.S. Customs Service, Record Group 36, Microfilm M1895, Roll 1, images 370–489). 85 pages, 6x9, large print.

Inside: 268 people on 47 manifests — the inward voyages of 1820 (with the last sailings of December 1819), from Boston, Baltimore, Norfolk, Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and New York. Each entry gives the person's name exactly as the clerk wrote it, with sex, age, height, the record's own class column, shipper/owner and residence, plus ship, master, ports, and date — and a full index of names tied to the Archives scan numbers.

Twice in these pages, the record keeps a person's own claim to be free. Mary, 26, shipped from Boston on the Suffolk, told the inspector at the Balize that she 'denies her being a slave' — the endorsement says so in those words. And Charles Moody, 30, first name on the ship Triton's list out of Baltimore, is recorded on 1 February 1820: 'Charles Moody says he is entitled to freedom.' A Charles Moody was reported missing from the ship Superb's manifest in Installment 2; whether it is the same man, the records do not say, and we leave the question open. Also inside: Edith's child born on the Fanny and Mary's passage; a third person aboard the Ladies Delight who appears on no manifest at all; Thomas, sent to Cuba as a servant on the stated understanding he would return; and Jesse, who stayed in Richmond. The art page carries Prince Demah's signed 1773 portrait — the work of an enslaved Boston painter — released free by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

With Installments 1–3, the project now holds 1,588 people. The whole New Orleans series holds roughly 114,000 name entries, and more installments will follow, voyage by voyage — all free. The companion guide and the growing Complete Set (everything in one download) are also free in this store.

If your family came through New Orleans, this is a place to look. Please share this freely — that is what it is for.