As a genealogist, archivist, and historical researcher, I know that one of the most difficult tasks for people tracing their Southern African American ancestry is to find generations before 1870. The 1870 Federal census marked the first time that persons who had been former slaves appeared by name on a Federal census schedule. Thus, 1870 is an enormous brick wall to much Southern research for people of color.

In 1860 and 1850, census takers did have special slave enumeration schedules, but there, painfullly, people are quite literally just numbers. The slaveowner has his (or her) name listed, but the people he held in bondage appear only by their age, gender, and color (usually designated as B for Black or M for Mulatto). Their names are not given.

Sometimes, families can be discerned, if the census taker wrote down ages in family groups, such as: female, 23; male, 5; female, 2. But at other times, the slaves on an entire plantation may be listed from the oldest to the youngest, making family groupings impossible to determine.

Enter the work of Tom Blake. Staggering in its scope, his comparison of the surnames of large slaveholders in 1860 to African Americans of the same surname in 1870 provides one method to help guide researchers in their quest to find their slave ancestors.

It is not a definitive source, by any means, but it does serve as an excellent signpost for further research. At least if a researcher can determine that their ancestor’s surname is the same surname of a white plantation owner in the same area, further research in local records such as deeds, wills or court records under the planter’s name may be productive.  It may also indicate the particular area of a county or parish where the planter’s family lived. It may be worth identifying the white neighbors of the planter, who may be relatives, and in turn, possibly slaveholders themselves, but in too small numbers to be included in Blake’s list.

To be sure, Blake’s comparison has its limitations, in that it may be easy to assume that a black family in 1870 with a surname that matches that of a white family in the area in 1860 might have come from that plantation. But no assumptions should be made. Slave-naming practices in the era from 1860-1870 varied considerably, and soldiers’ pensions from the USCT show that freedpeople may have changed their surnames three or four times until they found one they liked.

Sometimes they took the surname of a former slaveholder, not necessarily out of any “warm feelings” for their former master,  but more because there may have already been the local custom of referring to people by their plantation or slaveholder’s name.  Thus, in slavery times, “Joseph” on Peter Smith’s plantation may have been known as “Joseph, over at Smith’s place”. It would be only a small step to take the name Joseph Smith in that case.

Other times, freedpeople took names of people who had shown them kindnesses in some manner. This may have been a slaveholder on another neighboring plantation, perhaps where another family member lived. Or, it may have been the name of the local school teacher who educated freedpeople in the immediate aftermath of slavery. Perhaps the local Freedman’s Bureau agent, who may have been an abolitionist before the war, took the freedpeople’s side in labor contract negotiations after the war, and the former slave took his name for that reason.

Many former slaves, at least at first, seemed to have a fondness for names from American history or names that were evocative of their new status in freedom. Numerous men with the surnames of Lincoln, Washington, Jackson, Grant and the quite literal Freemen dot military rolls. Some took the famous men’s names literally, such as three men named George Washington in the 49th U.S. Colored Infantry.

It certainly can’t be assumed that former slaves automatically began using their former slavemaster’s names. Only further research, in a variety of records, can determine if that was the case. But the excellent compilation by Tom Blake, provides a solid starting point to begin that exploration.