Finding the Names — Installment 56 (Roll 7: New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1834–1835) — 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 56 — Roll 7, images 601–720 transcribed name by name by hand: 1,808 more entries (1,789 named, 19 unnamed) on 69 documents, 404 pages — the largest installment yet. The series now holds 35,272 transcribed entries. Image 690 is the typed divider opening "Inward Slave Manifests — April–June 1835."

The big Alexandria packets dominate. The brig Uncas sails twice: February's sheet numbers 154 and her certificate agrees — though the table carries a 155th entry, struck through in full after No. 101 — and April's closes at exactly 202, her New Orleans endorsement reading "Examined & found Correct one Death & one Birth, 20th April 1835": Jab Sams is annotated "dead" in the table, and the newborn is never named anywhere. The brig Ariel's three sheets carry 249 numbered entries and two unnumbered children against her Norfolk permission's "two hundred forty persons"; the brig Tribune's 162, by contrast, agree to the person everywhere.

The brig Virginia's Richmond papers name 111 people — 70 on her first sheet, 41 on a second — against the permission's "71 Slaves"; both figures are printed as written. The brig Louisiana's 150 entries survive her clerk's numbering (No. 10 skipped, No. 11 used twice), and the brig Demond's name is spelled five different ways across her own four manifests.

Deaths and exceptions, as the examiners wrote them: Eliza, 11, marked "Dead" on the brig Ajax with "28th Feby" beside her; "Polly's Child Dead" on the Ariel — the child was never entered on any sheet; Isaac of the schooner Delight found "not on board" by both examiners, her table's 26 lines against her certificate's "Twenty five"; and Thomas, Jack, and Mary of the brig America, asterisked "not on board" at her arrival examination. One man travels on a single sheet of paper: Peter of Petersburg, about fifty years old, whose whole manifest is a collector's certificate, endorsed at the Balize "The Negro Peter on board answers the above Description" — he is entered from that certificate, as the operative record of his passage. Small things kept as written: Fanny Johnson's height, "11 ft 11¾ in"; Francis classed "White"; Hanah of the Emeline, aged "6 days"; and Davy Cox, aged "25 or 26."

Includes a searchable CSV name list of all 1,808 entries (name, vessel, age, shipper, and more). Honest about gaps: illegible and conflicting entries are flagged, never silently fixed.

With Installments 1–56 the series now holds 35,272 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