Charles City County, Virginia Slave Ancestor File

A common misconception holds that slaves did not have surnames until after emancipation and that the names they took after the Civil War were those of their former owners. The truth is that many slaves, if not a majority, were using surnames by the beginning of the 19th century and that in some families surnames may have been passed down for generations before that time. A striking example is provided by Shirley plantation slave John Roc, who was enrolled as a member of Charles City Baptist Church before 1810. His namesake, another John Roc was an Englishman indentured to Col. Edward Hill on the same plantation in the 1670’s – a hundred and thirty years before. Just as certainly as slaves claimed and used surnames, official and plantation records denied them. The denial of surnames was an essential feature of an institution that regarded slaves as property and not as persons. The silence of the records presents a formidable – but not always impenetrable – obstacle to those seeking to trace ancestors. Some names did slip through and when one surname is used in conjunction with other records an entire family may emerge from obscurity. In other cases, post war freedmen’s records lend clues sufficient to tie a freedman to a former owner and family members together. This data base is an attempt to gather the names that “slipped through.” It is a work in progress, so please check back periodically for updates.