Slave research requires a very patient and diligent approach. You will not be able to find many of your slave ancestors directly. This is because of how they lived. Families were broken up and most of the genealogy is handed down orally. When trying to research slave ancestors, get your oral family history from the oldest living relative you can find and write it down! Find out as many details as you can such as: geographic locations, names of plantations, names of owners, the names of family members, and anything else you can find out. Then you are going to need to look at census records, tax records, slave schedules, estate and probate records, Freeman's Bank records, and other court records.

Start with present time and work your way backward, carefully documenting every fact. Get every name off of every document and find out the connections. If there is a family bible, ask to see it. If the entries look as if they are written in over the course of several years you have found a gem. Even if they appear to have been written in all at once, this is still a great amount of information and a really good starting place. Also, try to see if you can have copies of old letters and journals. Read them and see what they say. If you are able to come up with the name of the owner, check all of their court records, especially estate and probate records and tax records. Some of the tax records will identify slaves, even if by only age and gender. Estate records will mention the slave's names. To research slave genealogy you must be persistent. Never give up; a clue will eventually appear that will point you in the right direction.