Finding the Names, Volume One, Installment 10: New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1821 (Continued) — The End of Roll 1

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The tenth installment of Finding the Names, Volume One — our name-by-name transcription of the slave ship manifests filed at the port of New Orleans, taken directly from the original records at the National Archives. With this installment, Roll 1 of the manifests is COMPLETE: Installments 1–10 hold 4,692 entries from all 1,151 images of the roll.

In this installment: 528 entries (524 of them named) on 28 manifests and documents, Roll 1 images 1090–1151 — the roll's final stretch, closing out 1821, with one stray voyage of March 1825 filed at the very end. 158 pages, 6x9, large print.

What the papers themselves say: Two children from Installment 8 step forward again — Patsy Ash, 11, and John Runlet, 16, the indentured children whose shippers' oaths excepted them — at entries 154 and 157 of the brig Arethusa's 160-person general manifest, each still marked "(indented)." The Arethusa's general manifest counts her people one way (Sommerville's party 56, the Tomes & Webb children 50) and the shippers' own filings count them another (52 and 30); both filings stand in print, cross-noted, because the record itself disagrees. The brig Hollon's list of 141 carries an indentured trio — James, 18, Betsey, 33, and Amy, 10 — and a mystery: against two women the clerk wrote "& 3 Children," with no names at all. The steam ship Robert Fulton's 26 men were marched overland from Georgia and shipped at Pensacola — among them two men of forty entered side by side: Romulus and Remus. Jimmy, 63, is the roll's oldest here; a boy named Friday is one. The final image of the roll is the Archives' own target: "End of Roll. Please Rewind." We did not rewind. We read it.

Art frontispiece: Phillis Wheatley's portrait, 1773, attributed to the enslaved Boston artist Scipio Moorhead (the engraving is by an unidentified engraver). Library of Congress scan; no known restrictions.

Every word was transcribed by hand from the National Archives' own scans: Records of the U.S. Customs Service, Record Group 36, Microfilm Publication M1895, Roll 1 (NAID 173899247). No index and no other book was copied. Names are spelled exactly as the clerks wrote them; uncertain readings are marked [?]. Next: Roll 2, the inward manifests of 1822.

Made to help families find their ancestors. The companion guide and the Complete Set (guide + all installments so far, one download) are also free in this store. Please share freely — that is what it is for.

— Okey and Susan Barker, Trails End, Tiger Mountain, Oklahoma