Earlier this semester, the University Libraries officially launched "The Digital Library on American Slavery," a free resource that enables anyone with access to the Internet to search through thousands of court and legislative petitions dealing with slavery in the American South (1776-1867). Just click on http://library.uncg.edu/slavery/ . What might you find? The Digital Library includes records on 83,000 individual slaves from 15 southern states and Washington D.C. Each slave is named in the records, and in some cases the Digital Library includes other identifying information, such as specific skills and family relationships. The records include documentation on slaves who ran away, on free blacks seeking to purchase family members out of slavery, and on slaveowners petitioning to reverse wills, among many other topics. Already, amateur genealogists are turning to the site for information on their family histories, and we have heard from the descendants of slaves and slav...
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