After Emancipation in the 1860s, Black families hosted family reunions to locate relatives who were sold away during slavery. Families also placed ads in newspapers in hopes of reconnecting with loved ones.
Now, tracking down family members can be done at your local library, said Troy Valos, archivist and Sargeant Memorial Collections manager at The Slover Library in Norfolk.
Valos is hosting the Coastal Virginia Genealogy Conference Saturday at the Mary Pretlow Library in Ocean View to help African Americans conduct genealogy searches.
The idea for the conference came from The Sold Down River Project, which Valos initiated 15 years ago when a local professor inquired about a slave jail that once stood in downtown Norfolk.
The research sent the archivist into a spiral of information, revealing three slave jails and that Norfolk was the largest slave port in the mid-Atlantic. The findings correlated with the oral histories passed down about the slave trade in Norfolk, Valos said.
“We were always told Richmond, Baltimore and Alexandria were the primary ports, but it turned out that we had at least 16,000 slaves transported out of Norfolk,” Valos said. “When compared to the other cities, Norfolk had the most.”
Valos matched shipping agents, captains and slave traders to slave manifests, which documented that the enslaved persons were not coming from Africa. The 1807 Slave Trade Act had prohibited the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The manifests recorded each person and the ship that took them to ports such as New Orleans, Fort Adams, Mississippi, and Mobile, Alabama. Louisiana used French and Spanish law, which required more detailed information, said Stephanie Richmond, project director of Sold Down River.
“Louisiana was strict when it came to color, so you can get a sense of what people looked like. They had to list gender, color and height,” Richmond said. “They also had to take any property bought to the notary public, who corrected the sales records like family relationships between individuals.”
The data sets collected formed The Sold Down River Project, which launched in December 2024. Valos will discuss the website at Saturday's conference. During the conference, Ashlee Jordan, archives librarian at the Sargeant Memorial Collection, will discuss how to preserve family records. Jordan said it’s essential that people know how to properly store them to prevent damage.
Jordan will also present on how to use generative AI in research. Jordan said the tools, such as Optical Character Recognition, OCR, help search names and read old letters; generative AI isn't always accurate, Jordan warned.
Valos said people can make appointments at the archives department at The Slover to conduct a personalized search; the service is free. Valos is encouraging anyone who wants to find an ancestor to attend the conference.
“If your family is from North Carolina, Georgia or Mississippi, we probably have records.”
Richmond, who is also a history professor at Norfolk State University, said that during a genealogy craze in the early 2000s, white people were able to trace their ancestors back to when they entered the country. African Americans, however, often hit a wall around 1870 if they had enslaved ancestors; before 1870, most African Americans were not included in the census and their names were not recorded if they were considered property.
DNA kits such as 23andMe can list countries of origin, but Richmond said they can’t tell the story in the middle.
“That’s what we’re trying to help people be able to do: find their family’s story in the middle,” Richmond said. “Place matters and knowing where your people are from matters.”
The conference begins at 9:00 a.m. Saturday at the Mary D. Pretlow Anchor Branch, 111 W. Ocean View Ave, Norfolk. The conference is free, but registration is limited to the first 100. Visit the website to register and for more information.
