Yesterday, I wrote about finding documents for some of my ancestors’ slave holders in the Confederate Citizens File on Footnote. You can read that post here. Last night as I continued to browse through the collection, I found several records that mentioned slaves by name. The owners had been paid for labor rendered by their slave to the Confederate government. This particular document was in a 12 page file for Joseph A Gates of Virginia and mentions “Hire of Slave Nelson, as Laborer” several times.1 As I said in my post, these records are a rich genealogy resource. Take some time and browse the collection. You might be surprised by what you find.
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- ”Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms, 1861-65,” digital images, Footnote.com (http://www.footnote.com : accessed 20 January 2011), record for Gates, Joseph A, Petersburg,Virginia, 18 February 1864, page 8 of 12, citing National Archives Record Group 109, (also known as the “Citizen File” NARA M346). ↩
I have been annotating slave records from South Carolina for Footnote and it is the most profound experience. What a great find you have there.