1870 Brick Wall Page: Records Which Positively Connect Freedmen With Surnames to Former Slaveholders

Some call it the 1870 Brick Wall. Others call it the 1870 Divide. It is one of the most frustrating challenges of African American heritage research - getting back beyond the 1870 Census to find the names of enslaved ancestors.

The 1870 Census was the first to list freed African Americans by name. The 1860 Census listed only the age and gender of enslaved people, and plantation records, wills, estate inventories and bills of sale often listed only the first names of slaves.

To complicate matters, fewer than 20% of freed families in the Lowcountry adopted the name of the final slaveholder, so surname is so often not a good indicator of which slaveholding family's records hold the keys to your family's heritage.

Because of these challenges, many family historians find their research stalled at the 1870 Census.
Here, we have compiled all the records in our document database which positively connect freedmen with surnames to former slaveholders. As we find new records, we will add them to this page so please check back often.

Lowcountry Africana 1870 Brick Wall Page