Estate
Scaleby is a historic estate home and farm located near Boyce, Virginia. Built by H.B. Gilpin in 1909-11, he was the employer of Philip Nelson Randolph and Mary Eliza Hebron who arrived from Laurel, Maryland.
About African American
Genealogy Meetup
Advancing the knowledge of African Americans in the history of the United States, claiming and preserving their rightful heritage and legacy, and to make known their contributions and achievements.
This webpage is designed to give you, the viewer, a general idea of the genealogy information being compiled. We have a working database of about 4500 records that are updated as additional information becomes available. Genealogists are aware that quality of information rests not with the number of records on file but in the quality of detail contained therein.
Photographs: Top. Included are a few estates in Clarke County, Virginia where slaves (also free persons) labored, and where some stayed on after the Civil War ended in 1865. Below. The McKay Store (renamed Locke’s Store) in Millwood, Clarke County, Virginia, c. 1914.
Discovering family genealogy is both complex and exciting!
‘Tracing African-American roots can be a challenge. Before the Civil War, the enslaved were excluded from many public records and mentioned only vaguely in others; enforced illiteracy kept many people from writing their stories, and the forward flow of family memory was disrupted when children were sold away from parents. African-Americans were often segregated in records and those segregated records aren’t always as easy to access as mainstream ones.
Researchers have learned ways around some of these obstacles. One important strategy is to learn all you can about your recent generations first because the more you know about these relatives the more likely you are to recognize your shared ancestors in the record-keeping of the American slavery era.’ Pursue your goal!
Richard Hebron (1810-1867)
Wife: Henrietta (1823-?)
Laurel Town, Howard District
Anne Arundel County, Maryland
Wife: Henrietta (1823-?)
Laurel Town, Howard District
Anne Arundel County, Maryland
My Work
I concentrate mainly on my Randolph family lineage in Virginia (Counties: Clarke, Frederick, Warren) and its connection by marriage with the Hebron family lineage in Maryland (Counties: Anne Arundel, Howard,
Mostly a free people, the only known line of slavery is through a well-documented family member at the Saratoga plantation in Clarke County, Virginia.
My research documents family member connections and interconnections that extend outward to garner all relevant information pertaining to the above base structures wherever it leads. It includes location, occupation, activity, community, birth/death, marriage/common-law/miscegenation, religious affiliation, funeral/burial/cemetery, slave/free person, the slave owner/employer, migration, and other.
Maintaining a historical perspective and objectivity are keys to quality assessment and analysis of information. I must base conclusions on the factual rendering of information within its period of occurrence.
Genealogy Resources
MARYLAND – VIRGINIA – WEST VIRGINIA
Clarke County Historical Association
The Clark County Historical Association was founded in 1939 to preserve the history of Clarke County. The CCHA fosters the use of their records to enhance understanding through stewardship and education. In July 2016, the CCHA started a new historical initiative called ‘Capturing the Past’ which focused on oral history interviews with some of the oldest members of Clarke County to gain a unique perspective on Clarke County’s rich history.
Warren Heritage Society
Front Royal, Virginia
The Laura Virginia Hale (LVH) Archives is a treasure trove of local history. The Reading Room is open to the public and contains family genealogies, reference books on cemeteries, marriages, court records and histories of Warren and surrounding counties. They have copies of the Warren Sentinel, a photography collection, records on Revolutionary Soldiers and genealogies researched by Rebecca Good, a professional genealogist.
Handley Regional Library
Winchester, Virginia
Contains a variety of searchable databases on a variety of materials that includes local and regional newspapers, state and local taxes, and history that dates to 1794 and beyond.
West Virginia Archives and
History, African American
Contains a variety of searchable databases on a variety of materials that includes local and regional newspapers, state and local taxes, and history that dates to 1794 and beyond.
African American Genealogical Society of Central Virginia
The AAGS will serve researchers interested in the central Virginia counties of Albemarle, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, Madison, Nelson, and Orange. There is no membership except to have Virginia Roots.
African American Research
Library of Virginia
This video provides an introduction to pre-1870 African American genealogical research at the Library of Virginia. The video illustrates several ways to find out some initial information from their original records and databases before you contact staff members. This can save time and make your research more productive.
Virginia Museum of History
and Culture
The Virginia Historical Society makes available its genealogical resources. It should be noted, however, that the principal center for genealogical research in Virginia is the Library of Virginia, located in Richmond at 800 East Broad Street.
The African-American Narrative Project
University of Virginia
The Library’s African American Narrative project aims to provide greater accessibility to pre-1865 African American history and genealogy found in the rich primary sources in its holdings. This project seeks to encourage conversation and engagement around the records, providing opportunities for a more grassroots and diverse narrative of the history of Virginia’s African American people.
Researching African-American Families
William & Mary Libraries
Because of America’s long history of slavery and the lax record-keeping of vital statistics of slaves, researching African-American ancestors presents many unique and difficult challenges. However, numerous books have been written to assist in the research of ancestors, and many of the records that do exist, especially government records, have been indexed and/or digitized. Please consult some of the books for more assistance and additional resources.
Laurel Historical Society
Laurel’s African-American Community
Laurel’s African-American Community – Like the rest of Prince George’s County, Laurel was first a slave-holding, and then a segregated community. There were also thriving African American communities surrounding the town, including Hall Town and Rossville. Some of Laurel’s African-American residents were employed as ironworkers in Charles Coffins’ Ironwork Furnace in Muirkirk, south of Laurel.
The Maryland State Archives
Annapolis, Maryland
The Maryland State Archives is the central repository for state government records of permanent value. The Archives operates with a broad legal mandate to acquire and care for both public and private records relating to the history of Maryland from initial settlement in 1634 to the present.
THE REGINALD F. LEWIS MUSEUM OF MARYLAND AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY & CULTURE
The Lewis Museum has over 400 years of history in its permanent collection. Take a journey through Maryland African American history in the areas of industry, politics, leisure activities, sports, media, the arts, education, the military and more.
Library of Congress
Black History Collection
Contains correspondence, speeches, writings, court records, legal documents, slave deeds, family papers, birth records, inventories, wills, military records, financial records, ship’s papers, and marriage certificates pertaining to African Americans from the colonial period through the early twenty-first century. Topics include the slave trade, abolition, manumission, emancipation, medical care of slaves, civil rights, slaves, fugitive slaves, freedmen, free blacks, medical care of slaves, and African Americans serving in the Civil War and World War I.
Daughters of the
American Revolution
Minority Research
Useful records to collect include birth, death, and marriage certificates; obituaries, cemetery records, and funeral cards; probate and land records; newspaper announcements; oral histories; military records and discharge papers; and federal and state censuses. More than 5,000 African American or mixed descent patriots served in the American Revolution. Military service is credited to those who served in campaigns against the British between 19 April 1775 and 26 November 1783.
Historic Wardenings: Virginia Slavery
Inventory Database
The Slavery Inventory Database has researched and recorded the identities and locations of enslaved individuals who lived in Northern Virginia. The Fairfax Circuit Court Historic Records Center took on and greatly expanded this important work in their Slavery Index Project. The archivists cataloged every enslaved individual recorded in the county’s will books and deed books to advance the knowledge of the enslaved community of Fairfax County, Virginia.
West Virginia
Genealogy Database
This is a guide to West Virginia ancestry, family history, genealogy birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, family history, and military records. West Virginia was admitted to the union as the 35th state on 20 June 1863, and created from the state of Virginia. It is divided into 55 counties and its capital is Charleston. When researching your family history in Virginia be certain to include West Virginia because it is a viable source of information.
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen & Abandoned Lands
(the Freedmen’s Bureau)
In the years following the Civil War, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (the Freedmen’s Bureau) helped tens of thousands of former slaves and impoverished whites in the Southern States and the District of Columbia. The war had liberated nearly four million slaves and destroyed the region’s cities, towns, and plantation-based economy. It left former slaves, and many whites dislocated from their homes, facing starvation, and owning only the clothes they wore. The challenge of establishing a new social order, founded on freedom and racial equality, was enormous.
African American Genealogy
Presented by Dr. Henry ‘Skip’ Louis Gates, Jr.
Meet-Up With Like-Minded People!
Take part in an online adventure
Create your family tree and invite relatives to share. Search 190 million profiles and discover new ancestors. Dive into dozens of blogs and how-to articles on research basics, online searching, and sharing and preserving the past.
James E. Hebron (1854-1916)
Wife: Sarah R. Brown
Laurel Town, Howard District
Anne Arundel County, Maryland
Wife: Sarah R. Brown
Laurel Town, Howard District
Anne Arundel County, Maryland
Guidance
“Family memory is always your most important source”, says Tony Burroughs, professional genealogist and author of Black Roots. Beginners should start with family members to trace their family tree to avoid problems that may accumulate later on. Family memory is both an oral source and a physical source, and things in your family’s memories, i.e., information, connections, names, places, etc., can provide the background you need to help guide your efforts.
The Human Species
I believe that humankind, scientifically speaking, reside comfortably as a species-of-one. The problem we face lies mainly in social conventions, our acceptance of false conveniences fashioned to serve equally false convictions. The net effect of European adventurism was to create a social and economic dependency to feed its own conventions.
HUMAN FAMILY TREE OF LIFE
This worked well for some but to this day continues to create and expand the pool of marginalized peoples, and with no end in sight. The increased interest in genealogy may help us garner insight into humanity’s plight, spawn global consciousness, instill a collective and empathic will, foster appreciation for human diversity, and promote humanity’s inherent creativity to proactively address crisis largely of its own making.
Reactionary
Through genealogy I seek not a ‘black’ identity but to enhance my understanding of the co-mingling of peoples and cultures that produced human admixtures from which developed vibrant new cultures. Ethnicity as a practicing norm is lost in the hybridization of humankind since the beginning of time that has no beginning. To pursue social divisions based on speculative ethnicity is an exercise in convenience that ultimately markets false convictions.
Sarah R. Brown (1858-1929)
Husband: James E. Hebron
Laurel Town, Howard District
Anne Arundel County, Maryland
Husband: James E. Hebron
Laurel Town, Howard District
Anne Arundel County, Maryland
Research
One potential obstacle to tracing African-American lineage is slavery, an institution that broke family bonds and made record keeping nearly impossible. Because African-American slaves were considered property, often a bill of sale – bearing just the age and gender of the person sold – is the only record for an individual living in a pre-Civil War slave-holding state.
The challenges of reaching back to the period before the Civil War are great, but a host of tools are available if you know where to look. One invaluable resource is The U.S. National Archives. Documents created by federal agencies after the Civil War provide a wealth of personal data about the nearly four million African-Americans freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.
Genealogy Research
VIRGINIA RANDOLPHS / MARYLAND HEBRONS
Clarke County, Virginia
This county is particularly challenging but remains fertile territory for genealogy research. Historically, Clarke County had a large slave/servant population that was fairly well documented by census takers. But there is very little quality information available about how they conducted their daily living. We experience difficulty in getting beyond the 1795 time-period that now will require extensive research to better understand how my ancestors, the Randolph’s, most likely came into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia from the Tide Water region.
Howard County, Maryland
This also includes both Ann Arundel and Prince Georges counties. The Hebron’s have a long history at these locations that dates at least to 1800. As in Virginia where the ‘Randolph’ family name is found extensively throughout the population, so too in Maryland for the ‘Hebron’ family name. Due to the marriage that connects these two families, I concentrate my research on these two lineages. Census data is quite good, however, documenting the Hebron family prior to 1800 remains a challenge.
Martha Williams (1850-1916)
Husband: Harry Randolph
Millwood, Chapel District
Clarke County, Virginia
Husband: Harry Randolph
Millwood, Chapel District
Clarke County, Virginia
Perspective
Title: Of African Descent? Blackness and the Concept of Origins in Cultural Perspective. This is an interesting paper that presents a broader view of DNA test results and what its means for both individual and group black identity. It will certainly diversify your perspective.
“Over the past decade, the DNA ancestry-testing industry—based largely in the United States—has experienced a huge upsurge in popularity. [T]he notion of “genetic genealogy” has been strongly endorsed by…African-American roots-seekers…as a means to discover one’s ancestral “ethnic” origins. Yet personalized DNA ancestry tests have not had the same reception among people of African descent in other societies that were historically affected by slavery. This paper outlines and contextualizes these divergent responses by examining and comparing the cultural and political meanings that are attached to notions of origin, as well as the way that Blackness has been defined and articulated, in three different settings: the United States, France, and Brazil.”
Rice Production
The wording on this poster, “…, accustomed to the culture of sea island cotton and rice”, seems to suggest the slaves were imported from the Caribbean. That the sale takes place in Charleston, South Carolina, an area with large rice producing plantations, is a key consideration.
Click on Reference to read more.
Posters Advertising
Slaves For sale
Slaves For sale
Examples of advertising for the sale of Negro slaves. Left: Note the details, how slaves were categorized and value set, their ages, those with children, some children alone (to include infants), one young boy has a physical defect, and there are those listed as having a particular skill.
Project 1619
AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY
I must mention Project 1619 and its efforts to bring to the forefront the rich African-American history in the United States. Its mission is to construct a National Memorial at Fort Monroe to honor and remember the 400th Anniversary of the landing of the first Africans on English occupied territory at Point Comfort in 1619, today’s Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia.
The goal of The 1619 Project, a major initiative from The New York Times that its current issue of the magazine inaugurates, “is to American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year. Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country
I encourage the use of this resource-rich content to gain a more complete understanding of Black heritage that could do much to assist you in rendering a genealogy narrative that is factual and true to historical context.
Blog Posts
Sharing Information
Our Meetup
I would like to meetup with serious researchers who are attempting to understand the daily lives and community practices of African Americans in Clarke County, Virginia (1700-1900); in particular, the districts of Greenway and Chapel that incorporate Millwood, Boyce, White Post, and by extension area churches, burial grounds/cemeteries, residencies, farms, estates, and plantations. This goes far beyond what I would
consider as ‘normal or general genealogy’ to gain a better understanding of our ancestors’ daily lives and circumstances that impacted them and their communities. How and over what period they migrated into the Shenandoah Valley and settled into the aforementioned areas. Those who were slaves, and those who were free, and how they survived both during and after the Civil War.