10 Million Names Project

James Baldwin once said, ‘to be African American is to be African without any memory and American without any privilege’. Although he was not referring to family history, I always think of my research when I see this quote because I dream of finding my African ancestors one day. I have researched my maternal family back six generations. That research has taken me from Virginia to Alabama to Arkansas. I still have more research ahead of me to get to my African ancestors. That makes me more than seven generations removed from Africa, and I don’t have the privilege or luxury of being able to follow the paper trail that far back because my family was enslaved. I can’t go to the local county courthouse and request documents such as census records, land records, tax records, or school records because in 1796 my 3X great grandfather, Rev. Robert Hatchett, wasn’t seen as a man. He was considered property with no name since he was enslaved in Alabama and Arkansas.

I wasn’t able to find my 3X great grandfather in any of those types of records (click HERE to read more about my research of Robert Hatchett). I was able to find him through my family’s oral history and history of having family reunions since the early 1970s and newspapers. But what I have found about him is only about him, his wife and children. I haven’t been able to find any documents or information about his parents or if he had any siblings. This is why the 10 Million Names Project launched by American Ancestors is so important. The goal of this project is to recover the names of up to 10 million enslaved people in America before the Emancipation and locate their living descendants. It is my hope that this project will lead me to finding more of Robert Hatchett’s enslaved family as well as the other enslaved ancestors I have that I don’t already know.

There are five main projects/databases that will be searchable. Go to https://10millionnames.org to learn more about this project, donate your family history, collaborate with the organization, or to search the database.

• Making America – Records of Enslaved Laborers Within and Beyond the Plantation
• Journey to Liberation – Records of Mariners, Migrants, and Freedom Seekers
• On the Battlefield – Records of Solders, Veterans, and Refugees
• Community Buildings – Records of Black Institutions
• Remembering Slavery – Testimonials After Emancipations
  

***From American Ancestors press release***

American Ancestors, a national center for family history, is partnering with family historians, leading African American scholars, and cultural institutions to recover the names of the 10 million people of African descent who were enslaved between the 1500s and 1865 in the territory that is now the United States of America. The project—10 Million Names—will centralize genealogical and historical information about enslaved people of African descent and their families on a
free website.

The project seeks to amplify the voices of people who have been telling their family stories for centuries, connect researchers and data partners with people seeking answers to family history questions, and expand access to data, resources, and information about enslaved African Americans.