Finding the Names — Volume One, Installment 40: New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1828–1829 (Roll 6, Images 1–120) — FREE

Installment 40 of Finding the Names — Volume One: The Ship Manifests. The first installment of Roll 6 — the 1829–1831 manifests.

411 more entries transcribed name by name from the original New Orleans inward slave manifests — Roll 6, images 1–120, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1895, Records of the U.S. Customs Service (Record Group 36). The series now holds 22,609 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:

• The Henry Clay families — Austin Woolfolk's ship out of Baltimore carries 43 people, exactly her certificate's "Forty three," and whole families travel under their own surnames: the Sephus family, eleven people across three households; Rachel Stanley with Harriet and Dinah; Anne Guy with Roxana, 4, and George, 18 months; Amey Human with her three. Her oath is Maryland's term-service form — held not for life, but for a term of years.

• Catharine, and the child who was born — a second Henry Clay filing totals exactly her certificate's 104. The inspector's endorsement adds what no table holds: "except One died, named Catharine, & one born." Catharine's name survives only in that endorsement — her row lies in a sheet the filming blurred beyond reading — and the newborn was never entered anywhere.

• Harry, too sick to ship — the Octavia's clearance names Joe, 50, and Harry, 32. Across the sheet the master wrote and signed: Harry was "so unwell he could not be shipped." Joe made the voyage alone from that sheet.

• Lidy's infant — entered only as "Lidy & infant," her baby has no line of her own, yet the certificate's "Ten in number" counts her. She exists in the record only through the arithmetic.

• Emma, 8, travelled entirely alone from Mobile, shipped by the master himself — and Kitty, 24, the Florida's only person, has her residence entered as "On Board."

Six entries have no name; all are printed with everything that survives. 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 1773 portrait of Phillis Wheatley, attributed to the enslaved Boston artist Scipio Moorhead — Wheatley, kidnapped as a child, became the first African American poet published in English (Library of Congress; no known restrictions).

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.