Is there a way to see if my family owned slaves?

Question:Again for a school thing.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Again for a school thing.

Yes, but it is more trouble than you will go to, in all probability.

You'd have to trace your family back to the 1860's at a bare minimum, then go to a Family History Center or Public Library that had free access to the slave schedules of 1850 and 1860 and see if anyone matched. The slave schedules tell you the name of the owner, not the slave, and how many he had. If there are three or four people with the same name in the same county, some who own slaves and some who do not, you get into an ambiguous situation,

If this assignment is from some idiot high school teacher who thinks you can do a 4-generation genealogy in a weekend, with NO prior experience and NO subscription to Ancestry or Heritage Quest, just lie. Tell them your ancestor, James {surname} had a couple, but he freed them in 1860 and moved to California to hunt gold. Don't make the ancestor's given name "Robert Lee" or "Beauragard" or your teacher will smell a rat. Tell him/her your grandfather, now dead, heard the story from HIS grandfather.

First you need to have some of your family information for that time period. Names-date of births-locations lived. Then you can either search on-line using GenForum.com or another genealogy site (google to find) or go in person to a Family History Center in your city. These centers are located at the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS) found in your yellow pages. Once there you can find many facts regarding your family members, including whether or not they owned slaves. Good luck!

Yes.. but see my other answer.. you have to be specific.
1850 and 1860 census will show property values, and slaves were personal property. There are also slave schedules, and if you know a relative was fairly well to do (from that census info), they probably left either a will or probate file.
Name, date, place.. that is how you need to find them in the census.

Here you'll do better with the older census records--1840 on back. If you know the name of a male ancestor old enough to have been head of his own household that early, just look him up. The record will give the numbers of people--male and female, black and white--in various age ranges in the household. Of course a black person in the household MAY have been a free hired man or woman, but it's probably more likely that he or she was a slave.

If you know the names of any ancestors who died in slave states before the Civil War, you can also look up their wills. (Sometimes you can actually find these posted online.) Any slaves they owned would be mentioned there--sometimes to be willed their freedom, but more often to be parceled out to the various heirs.

U.S. Census Collection
> Slave Narratives
U.S. Colored Troops Records
Freedmen's Bureau Records
African American Family
History Books Online
Freedman's Bank Records

SLAVE NARRATIVES COLLECTION
Part of the new African-American Family History database on www.ancestry.com.

World War I Draft Cards
African American
Photo Collection
Southern Claims
Commission Records
FREEDMEN'S BUREAU MARRIAGE RECORDS
From 1865 to 1868, thousands of former slaves from 17 Southern states had their plantation marriages “legalized.” The records of these marriages (marriage certificates, marriage licenses, monthly reports of marriages and more) are among the most important records for finding black family members before and after the Civil War.

There are several new databases like these.