Genealogy for Yourself and Your Community

by bam

Building a family tree when the records were not built for your family. Start with the living, work backwards one documented step at a time, and learn the specific methods for crossing 1870: the enslaver's probate and property records, the Freedmen's Bureau, the Freedman's Savings Bank. Honest about which walls come down, which do not, and why that is a fact about a system rather than about you.