Finding the Names, Volume One, Installment 7: New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1821 (Continued)

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The seventh 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: 370 entries (369 of them named) on 54 manifests and documents, Roll 1 images 730–849 — the inward manifests of 1821, spring through fall, with one stray Philadelphia filing of July 1820 bound in among them. 114 pages, 6x9, large print. With Installments 1–6, the project now holds 2,541 entries.

What the papers themselves say: At the foot of the brig Intelligence's manifest, a clerk wrote down a nine-year-old boy's own words: "Joe is a Mulatto Boy, says his Mother is free." The table had classed Joe as Black; at New Orleans the inspector flagged the exception, and security was required to produce proof concerning Joe before the people were landed. Five people struck off the brig Cosmopolite — Arvenne with her small children Louisa and Lisette, George, and Marta — turn up on the schooner Milo instead, four of the five; Marta is not there, and the papers do not say what became of her. Thomas, a free Black man of 45, sailed to Havre, France, as a servant and was allowed home again. Dick, 24, had been condemned in federal court as illegally imported and sold by the U.S. Marshal. Eliza, 13, was shipped by "Paul Demelis a free Blackman." A baby was born aboard the brig Emilie on the passage — the installment's one unnamed soul. And on the ship Ohio's list, four of the six named were "left behind in Philadelphia, did not come."

Art frontispiece: Harriet Powers, Bible Quilt, 1885–86 — Powers was born enslaved in Georgia and told the Bible's stories in appliquéd cloth. Smithsonian National Museum of American History; public domain.

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