Finding the Names — Volume One, Installment 36: New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1828 (Roll 5, Images 481–600) — FREE

Installment 36 of Finding the Names — Volume One: The Ship Manifests. The fifth installment of Roll 5 — the 1828 manifests.

685 more entries transcribed name by name from the original New Orleans inward slave manifests — Roll 5, images 481–600, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1895, Records of the U.S. Customs Service (Record Group 36). The series now holds 19,756 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:

• A baby who exists only in an oath — the Ship Dumfries' master swore that nothing had changed since departure "except one Child born on board." The child is named on no table and described nowhere; the oath is the whole of its record.

• Lucy's double-entered infant — on the Brig United States' second 1828 sailing, her baby is entered twice as No. 55: first as a female aged 7/8, then as Vincent, male, aged 2/3. Both entries are printed.

• Harriet, shipped from New York — age 26, sent down from a free state, her residence written "Atta Rapas, Louisiana," consigned to New Orleans.

• Matilda, excepted then cleared — one inspector found the Fan Star's people agreeing "except Matilda," no reason ever stated; the next day another wrote "Inspected Matilda & found her to agree," and she was landed.

• A death waiting in the next installment — this installment's last page is the Ship Eagle's oath: "except Moses who died at Sea." His table opens Installment 37.

Four entries have no name. Two manifest tables in this stretch were filmed so blurred that no name on them can be recovered — the book says so plainly. 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 into slavery in Baltimore and manumitted in 1782 — the earliest known African American professional painter (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.