How can I trace African American origins to Africa?

Question:

How can I trace African American origins to Africa?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I'm putting a link to a beginners guide here.
It is very difficult to trace all the way to a specific African if you are one of most African Americans whose ancestors were enslaved. But more and more records are being researched now and made available, that research is not as hard as it was. The Internet has allowed people to share so much.

But, you should first talk to all the old folks in your family / Ask if there is a family Bible or some other place that family information is written down. And ask them to tell everything they remember. It's good anyway to do an oral history anyway of your Grandparents, or other elderly family members. Ask anything they know about their own parents and grandparents and any family stories. Try to really get them to talk. some little thing might be a clue that would help you. Sometimes people did pass stories down through generations. I have heard people tell that they knew from that back 200 years what plantation their ancestors were on.

To get to Africa you would usually need to trace back to at least the very early1800s. After that the slave trade was outlawed. it still went on illegally but not as much. Getting very far back can be hard. People sometimes changed their names a few times when they got their freedom and could finally choose their name, And they had no last names in slavery.

If you get back to the slavery times some plantations kept detailed records that are still in some archive, scattered all over, maybe even the slaveholders family still has them. But people are trying to make this information available.

There are also slave ship records but of course people were not listed by name, nobody cared what was their name--they were not even considered human they were just cargo. But sometimes people can put together plantation records and slave ship records.
There is a book called Slaves in the Family by a Edward Ball, a white man whose family were big slaveholders in South Carolina. He wanted to find out about the true history, and he meets up with descendents of the people who were enslaved on his family's plantations, and he also researches his family's records, and traced pretty far back--he was able to trace one family all the way back to a certain young African girl, who was kidnaped and brought over here when she was about 12, and what boat she came on and where it had came from, and he went and told the family and gave them copies of the records. That must have been so amazing. I wish there were more white people like that guy.
But there are other projects researching slave records, like the link I am giving you, scroll down to the stories about Groundbreaking Slave Genealogy Research for an example
You can get info and advice from this group Afrigeneas. Also here is a link to another site, it lists a bunch of online archives.

Also, you might be interested in the DNA tests various companies sell, where you just take a swab out of your mouth and send it in and they compare your genes with Africans but even then you may not get much of a definite answer. It has turned out the Africans are very genetically mixed because people have moved around there a lot. But some people have been able to find out something about the tribal origins of African ancestors.

Added:
I should have said, you should not automatically assume anything-- sometimes people forget that there were about 400,000 free people of color in the U.S. by the Civil War, and those may be your ancestors.

If your search does take you to ancestors who were enslaved people, Cindy is right, those records may make you very angry and you may have to remind yourself sometimes that it is not the fault of anyone in the present. What I hope this will give you, in addition to information, is a tremendous respect for our peoples strength and courage and determination.
I'm also attaching a couple more link :) 1 about finding obituaries from the many Black newspapers published in the 19th and 20th centuries, another is a long list of other resources. Source(s):
http://www.afrigeneas.com/guide/...
http://www.africanaheritage.com/...
http://www.genealogy.com/genealogy/12_ob...
http://www.cyndislist.com/african.htm...
http://www.afrigeneas.com/news.shtml#118... Some DNA tests will tell you what tribe(s) your ancestors were from, which will hint at where they were from, but that's about it. It can't tell names, obviously. The LDS church has a CD of Freedman's Bank Records, available at most Family History Centers for free, which might get you back before 1870. The US Census (some public libraries have subscriptions, most FHC's do too) can get you from 1930 back to 1870, maybe. Before that they didn't record the names of slaves, so it is about 400 times as difficult to trace your ancestors as it is for white people.

If you google "African American Genelogy" you'll get lots of hits, but don't get your hopes up. Most AA's get stuck about 1830 - 1860. Check out this site:

http://www.ancestry.com

This website has a whole section devoted to this, and also, and it has slavery records, and censuses, it also has slave narratives and gives some information regarding that issue that may give insight into how some of your family names came about, also ports of call for when people entered the country which may point you in the right direction, on where to start looking Africa or the West Indies, etc.

Please don't be offended by some of the terms I have used, as that is not my intention, I am just trying to point you in the right direction, the website really is very well done and not offensive at all.

If you need help getting started, please feel free to email me, I'd be glad to help. I have a membership and was able to search the Dawes Rolls for my Native American Ancestors and have my dad's paternal line traced back to the 1700's with some accuracy.

Just keep in mind that looking at these records may infuriate you, (it did me) but that it has no bearing on you or life in the present. Good luck.

PS here's a link for the DNA thing Ted Pack was talking about, also very insightful.

https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/geno... There are websites that will help you (I am not sure of them) but it is difficult as not all slave sells were documented and the owners would often change the slaves names I'm not really sure. I've heard about these DNA swabs but there's little or no genetic difference between a Igbo or a Yoruba or between a Fon or an Ashanti.

I guess you can try them out but i'm not sure about their accuracy.

My parents are from Nigeria and are Igbo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/igbo_people... Ariane gives excellent advise. Also, the 1870 census was the first census that most African Americans were listed by name, because it was the first National Census after emancipation. If you can find an ancestor on the 1870 try to pinpoint where he lived. If s/he was enslaved try to trace the records of the white family. Trace their Probate Records, and the Land Records. Remember that slaves were legally consider property, so they were sold and sometimes willed as such.

It is not impossible. I haven't been able to trace back to Africa but I was able to trace back to the 1700's. If you have the opportunity to get death certificates from an ancestor, make sure to read every line of it. It will have the name of the cemetery that they are buried in. If you can obtain cemetery records, you might be able to "go back" a few more generations. I'm posting a link to a website that has a lot of cemetery information. I was surprised to find that someone had canvassed several of the cemeteries my relatives were buried in. Good Luck!

www.findagrave.com