One of the disturbing stories out of the American slavery saga is the question of a person’s name. The idea of being labeled and identified with a personal name is a rudimentary part of the human experience. It is the first gift bestowed upon a newborn. It is basic to who we are. It is something we all take for granted.
When the African people arrived against their will, brought in chains in the holds of sailing vessels, one of the first things that happened was to be given a new English name. They had lost everything. Kidnapped, they were stripped of their family connections, culture, industries and social order. They arrived to hear strange people speaking in strange languages, whether English, Dutch, French, Spanish, and they did not know what their captors were saying about them. In many ways, the plight of the African slaves was similar to modern-day hostage situations where the hostages have been stripped of identity, placed in unfamiliar settings and surrounded by people who speak another language.
Fred Anderson
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At some point in the passage — when washed for the slave market, when placed on the sale platform, when taken by a new master — they were given names. Their old identity was lost. Their new identity was whatever they made of themselves and their name would be what had been given them.
Hidden in the antebellum Virginia Baptist church records are the names of slaves and freedmen who were members of the churches prior to emancipation. Piney Branch, an extinct church of Spotsylvania County, had a long list of slaves with names such as Sookey, Polley, Jamima, Prince, Friday and Nicey, as well as popular names of the times — Isaac, Abraham, Rachel and Reuben. Piney Branch only listed five free persons of color. In the church records from the 1700s, the names of the masters often were not the names of church members. The master may have been a member of the Anglican Church but sent his slaves to the Baptists for their spiritual education.
Ira Berlin, in his landmark study of slavery entitled Many Thousands Gone, observed that many of the names given to the slaves were selected out of contempt. “As if to emphasize their inferiority, some were tagged with names such as Bossey, Jumper and Postilion — more akin to barnyard animals than men and women. Others were designated with the name of some ancient deity or great personage like Hercules or Cato as a kind of cosmic jest: the more insignificant the person in the eyes of the planters, the greater the name. Whatever they were called, they rarely bore surnames, which represented marks of lineage that their owners sought to obliterate and of adulthood that they would not permit.”
Virginia Baptists welcomed the Africans into their churches. They received an understanding of the Christian concept of salvation, joined the church and entered into the Kingdom of God. They were accorded basic human dignity of having their name recorded in the church records. Most of the clerks even segregated their roles: black females, black males, white females, white males. But at least, their names were in the books.
It has been a goal of many years to eventually lift all those names and place them into a data base. It has been accomplished.
Over a three-year period, Mike Whitt, special projects assistant at the Virginia Baptist Historical Society, laboriously read the old church records, deciphered the handwriting of 18th and 19th-century church clerks, and gathered the names. We made an appeal to churches whose records are not in the Historical Society to send the names of the early members of African descent as well as white surnames. We now have a name registry which contains to date about 51,000 names.
We have listed the given names, the master’s name, any dates associated with baptism, removal, death, etc. We have listed white surnames. Already we have had African-Americans who were searching for their family roots to find some of their ancestors. Two visitors who used the registry came with the idea that their ancestors were slaves and discovered that they were freedmen.
For most African-Americans the frustration in genealogical research has been that they got back to the 1870 census and hit a brick wall. Of course, the 1870 census was the first post-War census and by then all of the recently-freed people had been required to take a surname of their choice. Now, the name registry at the Virginia Baptist Historical Society as well as those at other historical organizations has aided African-Americans by crumbling that brick wall at least a bit. It remains challenging because these are lists of given names. But if the researcher knows the county or the white family with which there had been a relationship, they may be able to make a connection. The registry may offer a jumping off place for research in other collections.
Many of the visitors — white and black — who have come to see the Historical Society’s “free indeed!” exhibit on the trials and triumphs of Virginia’s enslaved have asked questions about names. How did the emancipated people receive their surname? They chose them and the history of their family names is much like the history of Anglo names. Some were chosen because of a place. They were from Richmond so they would be known as Richmond. Some were chosen because of occupation. They had been known for their baking so they would be called Baker. They always had been in farming so they would be Farmer. Many chose to be known as Freeman because they now were free men. Some chose names of famous or highly-respected people such as Washington, Jefferson or Lincoln, the great emancipator himself. Some chose to be known by their former master’s surname. Many dropped their hated given name and instead of “Caesar or Pompey or Friday or Sookey” they took an English name and were William or Joseph or Elizabeth.
There are many lessons to be learned from the time before emancipation. Plan to visit the Virginia Baptist Historical Society’s exhibit “free indeed!” or order a copy of the book by the same name. Copies are $15.75 and can be secured by writing VBHS, P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173. Schedule a research appointment to search the name registry by contacting Darlene Herod at 804.289.8435.
Fred Anderson ([email protected]) is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage & Studies.