Finding the Names — Installment 53 (Roll 7: New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1832–1833) — 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 53 — Roll 7, images 241–360 transcribed name by name by hand: 498 more entries (491 named, 7 unnamed) on 51 documents, 135 pages. The series now holds 31,848 transcribed entries.

The schooner Sabine's papers (images 244–251) tell the fullest story in this installment. Five people — Mack, Lewis, James, Honore, and Jane — ran away from Andrew Durnford's Louisiana plantation in May 1832, took a small boat down the Mississippi meaning to reach Mobile, and were blown ashore in Texas. At Brazoria, in the Republic of Mexico, they declared before Alcalde John Austin that they wished to be returned, and signed by marks. Durnford's printed twenty-dollar reward advertisement is pasted to the papers, describing them one by one — Mack by a half-moon mark on his cheek, Honore, who "speaks both French and English." In the end the bill of lading brought home only three — Jane, Mack, and Honore — and the New Orleans inspector marked Lewis and James "not on board." What became of them, these papers do not say.

Three big lists anchor the installment: the ship Renown's 74 from Alexandria, every one under a full first and last name — Smallwoods, Fenwicks, Bells — bound for Natchez by way of New Orleans, a third of them Franklin & Armfield's consigned to Isaac Franklin; the brig Dwight's 69, handwritten at Mobile, closing "Sixty nine" exactly, with one woman entered under two names, "Silva or Priscilla"; and the brig Tribune's 93, exact everywhere, though her Alexandria certificate authorises her to proceed "to the Port of Natchez… via Norfolk" while every consignee waits at New Orleans and her people landed there.

The examiners' corrections do quiet rescue work throughout: on the brig Bourne, the man entered as "Henry" is endorsed "a female named Harvey"; on the schooner Helen Mar, "Mistake in the name of Frank — who is a Female, and Samuel, who is called Isaac"; on the brig Hope, a woman written "Mary" over a struck name "Should be Misey." The schooner Pacific's table names 39 against her certificate's forty. On the brig Ajax, a name stands "written on an erasure with the knowledge of this Office." Hanson of the Bourne was to be "Transported to Natchez Mississippi and there to be held to Service or labor." And the installment opens by closing the last one: the brig Halcyon's missing Baltimore certificate stands at image 241, her ten people "being ten in number," just as her manifest said.

Includes a searchable CSV name list of all 498 entries (name, vessel, age, shipper, and more). Honest about gaps: illegible and conflicting entries are flagged, never silently fixed.

With Installments 1–53 the series now holds 31,848 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