Pre-1870 African American Genealogy Is Real
In recent days, genealogists, online and offline, have begun dissecting and dismantling the myth of The 1870 Brick Wall in African American genealogy. Despite claims to the contrary, tracing African American ancestors and their lives prior to 1870 is not only possible, but a frequent occurrence among practitioners of African American genealogy. Pre-1870 records of African American forebears do, in fact, exist, even if too few Americans (genealogists among them) know how to access or use them. I am sharing a five-year-old Facebook post of mine, adapted for this site, as a demonstration of what one can uncover when researching African American ancestors in America’s antebellum era. Stay tuned for additional discussion.
Sometimes light falls from the darkest places. Less than 24 hours ago came the culmination of years of research. Attendees of my genetic genealogy seminars have heard how I assembled oral history, marriage records, death certificates, the US Census, and three different types of genetic evidence to extend my mitochondrial DNA line an additional two generations, back to my maternal 4th-great-grandmother, Silvia Willis (wife of Alex Brown Sr.) of Barnwell County South Carolina. Last night, after reviewing countless pages of FamilySearch's digitized antebellum probate records for Willises in Barnwell County, South Carolina, I found my 4th-great-grandmother, Silvia Willis and three of her children (including my 3rd-great-grandmother, Charity Brown) listed as slaves in the estate inventory of Williamson Watson Willis Sr. (1808-1853) of Barnwell County, South Carolina. That is just the beginning.
Identifying the slaveholder unlocked an unmarked door to the world that my ancestors inhabited: a life of servitude to various branches of a sprawling, but tightly-knit family of South Carolina planters. I traced how a 5-year-old Silvia, apparently orphaned by 1835, appeared in the estate inventory of her first documented slaveholders, Moore Johnson and the former Charity Couch (parents of Williamson Watson Willis Sr.'s wife, Charity Johnson), before being sold that year along with a number of other enslaved persons to Williamson's brother, Elijah Willis. By 1853, Elijah transferred ownership of Silvia and the others purchased from the Johnsons to Williamson Watson Willis Sr. Ironically, Elijah seems to have sold Silvia and the others to help emancipate and relocate his enslaved common-law wife, Amy, and their children, a process that begat controversy and court contests. Silvia and her progeny became the property of Williamson’s two surviving sons once Williamson died intestate in 1853.
The documents reflect how family separation remained a constant facet of life among the enslaved, especially when their slaveholders died. Silvia's husband and the father of her three children, Alex Brown Sr., does not appear in any of the same estate inventories, confirming that he had a different slaveholder and likely resided on another plantation, preventing the enslaved Willis-Browns from cohabitating as a nuclear family unit. Unlike Silvia's more fortunate counterparts on the plantations she worked, neither of Silvia’s parents appear with her in any of the three different estate files; one wonders if Silvia ever knew either of them.
These estate records illuminate a still unfolding story about people who otherwise have gone unnoticed. Some question the value and efficacy of genealogy generally and slave ancestry research specifically. While the research requires great effort, that effort yields great rewards, enriching, deepening, and personalizing our understanding of global history's complexities and nuances. Reconstructing the lives of the long departed can impart much-needed wisdom, teaching invaluable life lessons that transcend and bridge disparate times and places. May this unique study of the past power a dissolution of artificial divides and restore respect for universal humanity.
