African-American Family Histories
Hines, Pat. Christmas in the South. Columbia, South Carolina: Self-published, 2021.
Family relationships are a central theme of Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
Genealogists tracing family histories that include enslaved ancestors may find some of the following genealogy texts helpful in their research.
This list includes several books focusing on the histories of specific Black Floridian families.
- Berlin, I. (Ed.), and Rowland, L. S. (Ed.). Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era. New York: New Press, 1997.
- Blended Lives: An American Family’s Journey from Bondage to Triumph. Tallahassee: John G. Riley Center/Museum of African American History and Culture, 2003.
- Brady, Rowena Ferrell. Things Remembered: An Album of African Americans in Tampa.Tampa: University of Tampa Press, 1997.
- Brown, Canter. Genealogical Records of the African American Pioneers of Tampa and Hillsborough County. Tampa: Tampa Bay History Center, 2000.
- Delp, Theo Frances Rowe. Marriages Freedmen and Freedwomen, 1866: Jefferson County, Florida. Monticello, Florida: Self-published, 1983.
- Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past. New York: Crown Publishers, 2009.
- Ham, Debra Newman. List of Free Black Heads of Families in the First Census of the United States, 1790. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Service, General Service Administration, 1973.
- Hines, Pat. Christmas in the South. Columbia, South Carolina: Self-published, 2021.
- Lawson, Jacqueline A. An Index of African Americans Identified in Selected Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Bowie, Maryland: Heritage Books, 1995.
- National Archives and Records Administration. Black Family Research: Records of Post-Civil War Federal Agencies at the National Archives.Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2010.
- Reid, Debra A. and Evan P. Bennett, editors. Beyond Forty Acres and a Mule: African American Landowning Families Since Reconstruction.Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 2008.
- Rose, James M. Black Genesis: A Resource Book for African-American Genealogy. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 2003.
- Smith, Franklin Carter and Emily Anne Croom. A Genealogist’s Guide to Discovering Your African-American Ancestors: How to Find and Record Your Unique Heritage.Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 2008.
- Streets, David H. Slave Genealogy: A Research Guide With Case Studies.Bowie, Maryland: Heritage Books, 1986.
- Warner, Lee H. Free Men in an Age of Servitude: Three Generations of a Black Family. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992.