Finding the Names, Volume One, Installment 1: New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1807 and 1819

By Okey and Susan Barker. FREE — please share.

The first installment 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). 88 pages, 6x9, large print.

Inside: 296 people on 58 manifests — ships arriving at New Orleans in 1807 and the first half of 1819 from Baltimore, Norfolk, Petersburg, Charleston, Savannah, and Mobile. 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 the ship, master, ports, and date. 288 people are named; 8 were recorded with no name at all and are included, with a special section, so they are not lost. A full index of names — with ship, date, and the Archives scan image number — lets any reader check an entry against the original document.

This is Volume One of a free public project: the whole New Orleans series holds roughly 114,000 name entries, and more installments will follow, voyage by voyage. The companion guide, 'Finding the Names: A Free Guide to the Public Records of America's Slave Trade,' is 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.