Finding the Names — Installment 46 (Roll 6: New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1830–1831) — FREE

Finding the Names is a free series that transcribes America's slave-trade records from the National Archives' own scans, name by name, so descendants can find their families. Every installment is free — please share it.

Installment 46 — New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1830–1831: Roll 6, images 721–840, transcribed name by name by hand — 953 more entries (935 named, 18 unnamed) on 66 documents, 231 pages, October 1830 into the spring of 1831.

The brig Ajax out of Norfolk: her four shippers' sheets carry 163 lines, but four are struck through — a first No. 12 whose name is lost under the strike, Charles Roberson, Abram Bland, and Harriett Washington. Set those four aside and the sheets name exactly the 159 persons of her Norfolk permission. Her last page was photographed twice on the roll and is counted once here.

The ship Gulnare's Pitts sheet loses a man at sea: Bill's entry is struck through in full, the Balize endorsement reads "all Correct except Bill not on board," and the collector's footnote explains — "Bill reported to have fallen overboard & drowned."

The brig United States, Franklin & Armfield's own, brings 171 from Alexandria — her permission's "One Hundred and Seventy One" to the person — though entry No. 20 lies entire beneath a repair strip, and two of her people are consigned to John Woolfolk, not Isaac Franklin.

The schooner Walter E Hyer's first sheet prices its people in the margin — a dollar figure against nearly every name, with two bracketed sums of $400 each plainly covering two people together (Patsy and her child William; Sarah Sampson and Mary Francis). The figures are printed in the notes, as the clerks wrote them.

The brig Crawford's Charleston sheets name 47 people while her certificate counts "Forty Six" — and her owners are Tarabull on the manifest, Turnbull on the certificate. On the schooner Mobile, beside Mary, 32, the shipper wrote "Captn Loomis declare Mary is Runaway"; the Balize surveyor found only "those of them" agree with the description — she was listed and cleared, but apparently not aboard.

And filed among the manifests is no manifest at all: G. W. Morgan's letter asking Captain John Lopez to carry "the servants Fortune, and Kitty and her daughter" to Mrs Morgan at the Bay of Saint Louis — three people who travel on a letter, printed here as found.

Includes a searchable CSV name list of all 953 entries (name, vessel, age, shipper, and more). Honest about gaps: illegible and conflicting entries are flagged, never silently fixed.

With Installments 1–46 the series now holds 27,247 transcribed entries. Start with the free guide, "Finding the Names," and the free Complete Set, which gathers everything so far in one download.

— Okey and Susan Barker, Trails End