African-American Genealogical Resources at the Newberry Library

Located at: 60 West Walton, Chicago, IL

Services:

• Closed stack library
• Photo Identification required to get a library card

 

Good Collection of Southern records, examples include:

South Carolina Holdings

• Microfiche of records of a substantial number of low country churches
• Baptismal registers dating to 1700's contain sections for slaves, identify parents as well as slaveowners

Mississippi Holdings

• Mississippi marriages up to 1926 - useful because many African-Americans migrated North by way of the Mississippi River

Published transcripts or abstracts of antebellum records which contain slave information

• Deeds
• Probate records

Details on slaveowning families

Census, printed census indexes, and soundex indexes

 

Examples of some Microform Records

Complete set of microfilmed assistant commissioners' records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (the Freedmen's Bureau") - Mississippi's collection is especially good

Microfilmed records of Freedmen's Savings and Trust, a bank set up by the US government for emancipated slaves

Microfilmed index of Civil War and Service records - approx. 170,000 African-Americans served in the United States Colored Troops (USCT) - pension files and service records available through the National Archives - the Newberry has comprehensive holding of state adjutant general reports

Microfilm series - Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution through the Civil War, series A-I