Finding the Names — Installment 50 (Roll 6: New Orleans Inward Manifests, 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 50 — New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1831: Roll 6, images 1,201–1,226 — the last images of the roll — transcribed name by name by hand: 424 more entries (422 named, 2 unnamed) on 12 manifests, 115 pages. With this installment, ROLL 6 IS COMPLETE: 7,799 entries across Installments 40–50, and the series now holds 29,997 transcribed entries.

The brig Bourne sails through this series like a recurring character, and here she is again: 145 people under Robert Benthall, her Norfolk permission's count overwritten and reading only uncertainly "One hundred & twenty four" [?]. Her Balize endorsement records "one dead on the Passage," and the New Orleans examination names him: Alford Valentine, No. 109, a boy of 15, "said to have died on passage." Both examinations also flag "a Slight Mistake in the age and description of a girl named Patience": the manifest's No. 88 is a woman of 23½, 5 ft 2½ in, but the examiners found "a girl of about thirteen years of age, 4 feet 10 inches in height." Both descriptions are printed, as written. Her oath slip survives pasted onto a sheet of its own, filmed apart from her papers.

The brig Ajax's Norfolk permission certifies 183 persons; the sheets filmed in this installment name 116. Among them is Eliza, 24, X-marked on her sheet, of whom the Balize endorsement says: "Eliza not on board — Some Mistake in making out the List." The brig Tribune's three sheets name 131 — among them Caroline Brown, classed "nearly white," and Melinda Lane, aged "1 month" — against her Norfolk permission's 162 and her landing permission's "One Hundred and Eighty two": three numbers, none agreeing.

The roll's last filings are a mixed drawer: the schooner Maria of Pensacola, dated 11 October 1830, a full year earlier than its neighbours; the schooner John Meares [?], whose own packet cannot agree whether her master is Bromley or Bradley. Then the filming targets: "ROLL 9 / END" and "M1895 — Roll 6 of 30 — End of Roll, Please Rewind." Roll 7 — the inward manifests of 1832–1836 — is next.

Includes a searchable CSV name list of all 424 entries (name, vessel, age, shipper, and more). Honest about gaps: illegible and conflicting entries are flagged, never silently fixed.

With Installments 1–50 the series now holds 29,997 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