Finding the Names — Volume One, Installment 31: New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1826–1827 (Roll 4, Images 601–666) — FREE

Installment 31 of Finding the Names — Volume One: The Ship Manifests. This installment COMPLETES Roll 4.

694 more entries transcribed name by name from the original New Orleans inward slave manifests — Roll 4, images 601–666, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1895, Records of the U.S. Customs Service (Record Group 36). Roll 4 totals 2,477 entries across Installments 26–31, and the series now holds 16,382 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:

• Pallydone — alone on his manifest. His oath, with the word "not" written in above the line, says he is NOT held to service and labor. The certificate on the same papers calls him "the said Slave." Both stand, word for word.

• Joseph Washington — the Hope and Polly's certificate claims one hundred people; her sheets name 99. The inspector names the hundredth: "one Man — Joseph Washington, name omitted or Mistaken on the Manifest." He has no row of his own anywhere.

• The Fair Star's two men — described in full (36, six feet tall; 29, five-nine), inspected, landed — and the Names column is completely blank.

• The Hibernia's damage — a ruined strip of film swallowed entries 73–79 whole, and eight more people survive as rows with everything except their names.

• "Killed" — one pencilled word in the margin beside Barnett, 24. No explanation anywhere in the ship's papers.

• The States' 116 — bound for Natchez, their "to be sold" clause struck through, including Diny Blake, 31, with her twins Philip and Ann, both aged 1.

Nineteen entries have no name. 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 The Westwood Children (about 1807) by Joshua Johnson, born enslaved in Baltimore — art by an enslaved artist (National Gallery of Art).

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.