Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware: From the Colonial Period to 1810

Deeds, wills, inventories, and court records have been heavily used to research the lives of 383 families of the free African American communities of Maryland and Delaware during the colonial period. While relatively few slaves were freed by their owners during this period, 600 children ‘were born to white women by African American men’. From 1795, the 1726 legislature requiring that the ‘mixed-race children of white women to be bound out until the age of thirty-one’ was repealed. This is a complex, and in some cases ambiguous, society, in which slaves were treated as property yet relations were ‘good’ with free African American neighbours. Rich in the building blocks of family history information – family relationships, names, dates, places – plus sometimes ages, and physical descriptions, this book is vital reading for those wishing to research family ties in the period and era.

• Published by Genealogical Publishing (Second Edition) in (paperback) US$45. ISBN: 978086359281 HT