Finding the Names — Volume One, Installment 39: New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1828–1829 (Roll 5, Images 841–906) — FREE

Installment 39 of Finding the Names — Volume One: The Ship Manifests. The eighth and last installment of Roll 5 — with it, the 1828 roll is complete.

822 more entries transcribed name by name from the original New Orleans inward slave manifests — Roll 5, images 841–906, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1895, Records of the U.S. Customs Service (Record Group 36). Roll 5 in full: 5,816 entries. The series now holds 22,198 entries.

Every entry gives the person's name exactly as the clerk wrote it (or records honestly that no name survives), with sex, age, height, the clerk's class/colour column, the shipper or owner, the vessel, the master, the ports, and the date — plus the inspectors' endorsements, where the human stories live:

• The Ajax reconciles exactly — and two of her men escaped. Twelve shippers' sheets total 197 people, precisely her permission's "197 Persons." But Jess is annotated "runaway in Norfolk," and Randal has "run away" written across his entry — both endorsements note them absent. Neither man reached New Orleans on the Ajax.

• Sold before they ever sailed — Joe, 19, and Caroline, 10, are struck through on the Cannon's clearance. The inspector's note: they "were sold in Mobile after this clearance was given." The other nine landed; these two never left Mobile on her.

• Cynthia, about 22, is crossed out entirely on the Mary Ann — yet the Charleston certificate's count of sixteen males and nine females still includes her. No reason is given.

• The damage patch — ten people on John Woolfolk's Orleans Packet sheet survive only as fragments at the edge of a damaged patch: one aged 19 classed "Mulatto," a child of 2, an infant of a few months. All ten are printed as unnamed people, fragments and all.

• The Sarah's 148 and the Neptune's 123 — both exactly their certificates' totals. The Neptune carries full surnames descendants can use: Sam Garrard, James Bramble, Sam Brown, Billy Stone, Ben Farand. The Sarah's mothers are entered as "Lucy &" and "Mary &," their infants on bare lines below.

Sixteen entries have no name; all are printed with everything that survives. Where the papers disagree, both readings are printed. Nothing is guessed.

FREE, now and always. Please share it — somebody's ancestor is in here.

The frontispiece is Prince Demah's 1773 Portrait of William Duguid — Demah, an enslaved portrait painter in Boston, was bought free by the very sitter of this portrait (Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0).

Transcribed by hand from the National Archives' own scans. No index, database, or published book was copied. A companion name-list CSV for this installment, and the free guide 'Finding the Names: A Free Guide to the Public Records of America's Slave Trade,' are in our store; the Complete Set download holds the guide and every installment so far in one file.