Black Americans: New Way To Trace Ancestors

It is called Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. Two years in the making at Emory University in Atlanta, the free Web-based resource documents the slave trade from Africa to the New World between the 16th and 19th centuries, said David Eltis, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of History in a press release.

Launched to commemorate the bicentennial of the official end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, "Voyages" provides searchable information on almost 35,000 trans-Atlantic voyages hauling 70,000 human cargo, as well as maps, images and data on some individual Africans transported.

The website also includes data on more than 95% of all voyages that left ports from England - the country with the second-largest slave trade - and documents two-thirds of all slave trade voyages between 1514 and 1866.

However, there is a snag: the database lists African names - which were later Westerned - so researching by name will be difficult. However, for a person who knows that an ancestor was enslaved in a certain part of the South, the database might help them trace from where in Africa they most likely came, Leslie Harris, a history professor at Emory University.

Booker Rising response: Due to a mitochondrial DNA test, I know that my matrilineal line - my mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's etc. line - traces back to modern-day northern Cameroon/southwestern Chad/southeastern Nigeria. Although this test only examined 1% of my total genetic makeup, 1% is better than nothing at all to a black American. One of my maternal great-great-grandfathers (my mother's mother's mother's father) was a Gullah. A maternal great-great-great-grandmother (my mother's father's father's mother's mother) was named Kizie. I'd like to see if there is a Gola / Kissi / Angola link up in there. On my father's side, ancestors were enslaved in Mississippi. On my mother's side, it's Mississippi, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana.