Nearly 4m records of enslaved people in 20 former British colonies now searchable online
Summary
Nearly 4 million records of enslaved people from 20 former British colonies are now searchable online. These records were digitized by Ancestry and University College London to help descendants learn about their family histories.Key Facts
- The collection covers records from 1813 to 1840 in places like Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Trinidad, Mauritius, and South Africa.
- It contains about 300,000 pages of detailed information including names, ages, family relationships, and physical descriptions of enslaved people.
- The registers were originally created by the British government to monitor enslaved populations after the slave trade was abolished in 1807.
- Some records note whether individuals were born in Africa or in the Caribbean.
- The digitized archive allows descendants to easily search for ancestors without visiting physical archives.
- The project was done by Ancestry and UCL’s Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery.
- The records help restore personal histories that were once reduced to property lists.
- This release follows research showing over 10,000 people were involved in the British slave trade over nearly 250 years.
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