Enslaved people’s genealogies survive only in slaveholders’ property records, not government documents.

Evidence

Chris also explained that the only way to piece together my enslaved ancestors’ whereabouts was to look at the slaveholders’ documents. I knew that proving my lineage was particularly challenging since the births and deaths of enslaved people were rarely if ever documented. What I did not know, until I spoke with Chris, was that the slave owners kept indexes and inventories of their property—which, he warned, included slaves along with farm equipment and animals. I had seen wills of slave owners that often named enslaved people as part of their inheritance, but never these inventories. What Chris helped me realize was that to learn anything about my enslaved ancestors, I needed to first find the wills and slave indexes of the people who had enslaved them. What a demeaning process: for white researchers looking for their ancestors, they have the privilege of searching easily accessible and well-kept government documents. The Black experience is so very different. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 353

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the slave index and inventory as the documentary key for tracing enslaved ancestry — the procedural heart of the book’s genealogical claim.
• XREF: Connects to the broader argument in this book that archives were designed to erase Black kinship records — echoes Saidiya Hartman’s work on archives of enslaved people.