Thats high on my to do list. Thats a goal that I am working towards. I have been unable to trace several of his siblings and now wonder if it might be because others did not take that name. So far Ive found no one who can give me any information about how these people assumed the Culbert surname. Jackson: This name is a patronymic of Jack. The last U.S.census slave schedules were enumerated by County in 1860 and included 393,975 named persons holding 3,950,546 unnamed slaves, or an average of about ten slaves per holder. Slavery's reach is still with us, and part of the gift of doing African-American genealogy, "The past is not dead. Miracle, (Old English and Latin Origin) Derived from the first name Mauritius meaning "dark". Although enslavers often assigned names to newly acquired enslaved peoplethat were whimsical, satirical, or condescending in intent, the frequent appearance of classical names-Venus, Cato, Hercules, Bacchus, Pompey-reflect enslavers' own educations and libraries. 6. In 1870, he is listed as John Washington. A favorite of British novelists including Evelyn Waugh and P. G. Wodehouse, Ambrose has an air of blooming well-being and upper-class erudition. Osprey Publishing 2008. Thanks for all you to do keeps us all so enlightened! See more details in the flier here and they are available for purchase for $10 . For descendants, I would add the substantial emotional impact of seeing an ancestor's name attached to a dollar value, or being valued in a list with silverware and cattle. Another interesting fact is that Creole surname use also evolved over time and varied from record to record with the same person. The population was more than 16 million and the industrial revolution was under way, which debunks any perception of a broadly colonial society. Ive taken back reclaimed some of that lost memory, especially that of my enslaved ancestors. In another case Sukey Ann and he 4 children were manumitted by their Ashby owner with only their first names. The first published African-American poet & author Phillis Wheatley was born in West Africa. 42. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Baptiste Meaning: derived from the name Bautista; the Spanish form of Baptist Origin: Spanish 3. Nonetheless, this is a situation where two brothers selected different surnames. I was called mostly Lewis Smith till after the war, although I was named Dick Lewis Smith After the War, I was wearing the name Lewis Smith, but I found the negroes were taking the names of their fathers, like the white folks. "Slave revolts in Puerto Rico: conspiracies and uprisings, 17951873"; by: Guillermo A. Baralt; Markus Wiener Publishers; harvnb error: no target: CITEREFAssociation_of_Muslim_Social_ScientistsInternational_Institute_of_Islamic_Thought2008 (, sfnm error: no target: CITEREFSmith2001 (, sfnm error: no target: CITEREFWhite2016 (, sfn error: no target: CITEREFBrands2012 (, sfnm error: no target: CITEREFMcFeely1981 (, Last edited on 22 February 2023, at 03:19, sued her master for her freedom on that ground, United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, Diego Pacheco Tllez-Girn Gmez de Sandoval, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, South Carolina's 5th congressional district, List of the last surviving American slaves, Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom, Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, National Museum of African American History and Culture, "What is the divine purpose for sending prophets? They called me "OCK". Encyclopedia of North Carolina, University of North Carolina Press. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. You can use the links below to view more common surnames. Just makes me sad for the human spirit that anyone, let alone hundreds of thousands of people could participate in it. College Advanced AA Gen. Class, November 2012, Robyn, Aaron, Karen, Katherine and Michael, October 2014, African-American Family History Conference, February 2015, African-American Genealogy Group Conference, October 2016, Central Maryland AAHGS, with Alice Harris, September 2015, Howard Comm. European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil, France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean, France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789, George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax, Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World, Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World, Impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean, The, Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian, Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas, Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World, Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833, Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The, Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World, Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic, Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy, Napolon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World, Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History, Native American Histories in North America, Native Americans and the American Revolution, People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe, Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World. Free black slave holders could be found at one time or . Cook Cook has an Old English origin, and it means 'one who cooks' or 'one who sold cooked meat'. See footnotes for source information. Dick Lewis Barnett and Phillip Fry were African American veterans of the Union Army during the Civil War. that lists the slaves along with their surnames. There are certainly methods you can used to try to verify some of the storyyou can look for Carrington and Williams slaveholders in the area in which your ancestor lived in the 1870 census. Or, the Slaves were given numbers or classical Greek names. 77th U.S. Col Inf and Co. D. U.S. Col H Art under the name Lewis Smith which was the name I wore before the days of slavery were over. You should give a TED talk! As a newspaper that publishes in the spirit of the Black Press, the Black Voice News has given voice to the voiceless and shined a light on systemic inequities and disparities since 1972. is for you. FamilySearch Centers. Former slaves also interchanged surnames on census records. . Just from the detail in your first comment, I knew there was a good chance you were already familiar with those authors. 19. Available from https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2014.174.8?destination=/explore/collection/search%3Fedan_q%3Denslaved%26edan_fq%255B0%255D%3Dobject_type%253A%2522Photographs%2522 (accessed May 6, 2022). There are also a few problems with the original dataset in name transcription such that a small number of first names were transposed with last names. . Search 30 million given names. Jonah, the name of the Old Testament prophet who was swallowed by the whale, only to emerge unharmed three days later, is increasingly appreciated by parents looking for a biblical name less common than Jacob or Joshua, yet not too obscure. It is these single names that have been most often studied. Facing History & Ourselves uses lessons of history to challenge teachers and their students to stand up to bigotry and hate. Ref. Used by permission of the publisher. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. In 1870, all of them were listed with the surnames of their last owner; however, each one of them named their sons for one of their brothers. It was after emancipation on that I went back to work for Col. Morrow and where I got the name Lottie, as already explained. A krio from.Freetown Sierra Leone. However, research byLisa D. Cook and colleagueshas revealed evidence of racialized names from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Clark is a common surname of Anglo-Scottish origin. "Injurious Names: Naming, Disavowal, and Recuperation in Contexts of Slavery and Emancipation." In The Anthropology of Names and Naming. The same family may appear with different surnames in the 1870 and 1880 federal census records, and may appear in other records with either, both, or a third surname altogether. Through a video-based activity, students explore how Radical Reconstruction changed the nature of voting rights and democracy in the South. And this example from another pension file shows how even the given name of this enslaved woman was held under little regard: Testimony of Mollie Russell (widow of Phillip Fry), September 19, 1911: Q. Copyright 2006 by the University of North Carolina Press. So just a few things to be aware of when researching any African-American ancestors. Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1974). What remains utterly amazing to me is that in the worst of circumstances, and in spite of every attempt to crush any idea that slaves were anything other than commodities, slaveholders did not succeed. Brutus) and a private name (e.g. Q. However, the enslaved occasionally had surnames, which became normal leading up to and after emancipation as a mark of assimilation into free society. Slavery. Where did you get the maiden name of Smith from? Start your year off with tips and strategies that can help you in the new year & beyond. But once freed most immediately chose surnames, with or without keeping their accustomed name. Names. Abebe: The genesis of this Ethiopian name is Amharic, and it means 'flower' or 'blossom'. The names that were brought together to form "Geffery" were "Gaufrid" (territory-peace), "Godafrid" (god-peace), and "Galfridus" (song-peace). For him, this meant claiming his new identity as a freedman and a citizen. Students explore the legacies of the Reconstruction era today, reflect on the idea of democracy as a continuous process, and consider how they can best participate in the ongoing work of strengthening our democracy. This financial assistance was available to all Civil War veterans and their families. Claudia Bautista,Santa Monica, Calif. You must have JavaScript enabled to use this form. Edited by Gabriele vom Bruck and Barbara Bodenhorn, 178-199. It is certainly possible that Wilsons siblings could have been sold away or owned by others. Isaiah derives from the Hebrew Yeshayahu, containing the elements. In 1911, Barnett and Fry's widow, Mollie, both applied for pensions from the government. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website. However, many African Americans faced a problem when they applied for their pensions. I have gotten so many requests over the years from those who couldn't make the live webinars so I hope you enjoy this new feature. Pinckney, Randolph, and Rutledgeappear only incidentally among any list of modern Black peoples names. I focused on surnames but many of these books also discuss first names. My maiden surname is Williams. I love that your example shows two brothers, who came to different conclusions about their surnames. Minerva is the long-neglected name of the Roman goddess of wisdom and invention, the arts and martial strength, one of the. Many names, whether African derived or English, refer to birth circumstances, including both the ubiquitous day-names, which derive from the West African Akan-Twi language group, and others such as birth order and time of birth (e.g., day of the week, month, or season). Anouilh. Robyn, Unraveling the origins of FPOC and slaves in Francophone Louisiana takes some thinking outside the fact, meticulous research ,familiarity with the local culture, history and a bit of serendipity on your side. In addition to time and place, a likely variable is whether the birth rate, in a severely overworked and maltreated population, was sufficient to ensure a relatively stable population over several generations, or whether the high mortality associated with slavery led to declining numbers and hence to the frequent acquisition of new slaves. Along with Abraham and Prince, other early African American names currently in the US Top 1000 include Alonzo, Athena, Daphne, Elijah, Isaiah, Israel, King, Phoebe, and Titus. The names they gave their children provide a valuable, if limited, index of that process over time. While Smith remains the most common U.S. surname, for the first time, two Hispanic namesGarcia and Rodriguezmade the top 10. Were there any famous slaves? . New surnames were created from a local regions name such as Smithfield the name taken might be Smith or Field. Slaves were generally listed with just one name and thus with little to none of the genealogical information recorded for free whites. Another slave named Bill who attended the sheep became Bill Shepherd. They were all sold to different owners: Connell, Rose, Johnson, and Hughes respectively. I was called by that name all the time I was with the Morrows. They were Nelson Nunn and George Nunn and they may have changed their names to Crosby too because they were my fathers children.. Besides the Morrows, whom else did you live with in Louisville? Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on I am awar eof the different naming traditions practiced in that area and I thank you for sharing them here for my readers. Well, Ive gone off on a tangent again;) But thank you again for writing and thank you for the cemetery work (especially trying to include African-Americans you are doing that will be of benefit to others. . Another common way of distinguishing people would be 'son of', for example Johnson (son of John), Richardson, Wilson, Harrison etc. Some scholars of slavery have come to view the names and naming of enslaved people as agauge of many aspects oflife and culture during enslavement and of howcustoms changed over time. With your explanations in mind, I will go back over a couple of family groups and re-assess the surname ambiguousness I have in my notes. Harriet Tubman and some of the slaves she helped free. Last updated: November 1, 2003 "Dwelling No." This is another instance of oral history being a key component in tracing African American ancestry. A. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW! Q. Danish West Indies, Denmark, Records of Enslaved People, 1672-1917 The association with the infamous Nero, the fiddling Roman emperor, would be unavoidable. When I was born my mother was known as Phillis Smith and I took the name of Smith too. This causes many researchers to wrongly conclude that enslaved people did not have surnames until after emancipation, which was not the case. So I asked my mother and she told me my father John Barnett, a white man, and I took up the name of Barnett . Former slaves often made up surnames based on their occupations. You already know the rich historical terrain of FPOC in Louisiana, what terrific grounds for family research. Wood were recorded as slave. Chapter 4 gives a brief and introductory outline of naming in the United States during slavery and its consequences in African American culture. In ancient history, Lysander was the name of an esteemed Spartan naval commander and his literary cred comes from one of the two star-struck young men in Shakespeare's. (Media Note: If you quote a post, please credit me by name, Robyn N. This mini-lesson helps students define the term, learn what forms reparations can take, and consider what reparations should be offered for slavery and other racist policies. Of the 972 names of male Slaves recorded between 1619 and 1799 the leading ones were Jack, Tom, Harry, Sam, Will, Caesar, Dick, John, Robin, Frank, Charles, Joe and Prince. Each is present in your body. This event is $25. Enslaved peoplethemselves sometimes chose names denoting weather conditions at the time of their child's birth or some distinctive feature of his or her appearance. Can you steer me in the right direction? The resources Im getting from my colleagues through Facing History have been just invaluable. As a result, many slaves used the surnames of their owners wifes family. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Prior to the emancipation of the American slaves in 1863, those African-Americans held in bondage had usually just one or two given names. Ho Joanne, Some of these individuals probably lived through the Civil War to become named citizens in Ashley County, Arkansas and may have taken the last name of Hollaway/Holaway or Terry/Tery. I dont know what became of his parents. We had to register as someone, so we could be citizens. After the war ended and slavery was abolished, they exercised their freedom by changing their names. Abel, the name of Adam and Eve's unfortunate younger son, compensates with positive connotations: capable, competent, ready and willing. Most Popular African Last Names Or Surnames.