Overview & Methodology

The Virginia Emigrants database includes names and information about emigrants for Liberia, and also data for nonemigrants involved with colonization in various ways. The names of, and information about, Virginia emigrants were gleaned mostly from the original ship lists found in the American Colonization Society Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.1 Some Virginians sailed on vessels through the Maryland State Colonization Society, an auxiliary of the American Colonization Society (ACS), and thus were noted on their ship lists.2 Original correspondence, journal and newspaper articles, courthouse records, etc. added much valuable information to the knowledge of the lives of emigrants and their relationships, and information regarding other people involved with colonization.

Ship Lists:

The ship lists can contain information such as full names of emigrants, their ages, occupations, religious affiliation, relationship to others on the list, and sometimes a note as to “emancipated by”. The information on the ship lists is straightforward as to interpretation, except “emancipated by” and similar wording.

For the ACS, the word “emancipation”, or the phrases “emancipated by” or “liberated by” had two meanings:

• One meaning referred to the Virginia law passed in 1782 which defined only two pathways to freedom for an enslaved person—either by freedom bequeathed in a last will & testament or by a deed of manumission, both of which were not valid unless recorded in the county courthouse.3
• The ACS's other use of the term was their own internal definition when an enslaver gave up for emigration an enslaved person who had not been legally freed according to law at the time of embarkation. The ACS's interpretation was that the act of an enslaver placing their enslaved person on a voyage to Liberia was in effect granting that person freedom from slavery.

Therefore, a notation on the ship list that a person was emancipated does not necessarily mean that the person had the legal status of a free person according to Virginia law at time of emigration. A person still legally enslaved at time of emigration was, by Virginia law, subject to re-enslavement upon return to Virginia.

Because of the ACS's dual use of the term “emancipation”, this aspect of the ship list notations should be interpreted with a healthy dose of skepticism, and always followed up with further research.

Another caution regarding the “emancipated by” notations in the ship lists is the designation of the person doing the supposed emancipating. Sometimes the ship list is referring to the person who facilitated the emigration event, not the actual enslaver. This could be the executor or administrator of an enslaver's estate, an heir of the enslaver, or the person who negotiated with the ACS for the actual enslaver. The ship list was usually compiled after the emigrants boarded the vessel at the port of embarkation, and sometimes at port of entry in Liberia. Therefore, the list was often compiled by a person who was not familiar with the specifics of the situations of all the emigrants. So there is opportunity for erroneous information to appear on the ship lists. These issues are another reason to be skeptical of the “emancipated by” notations in the ship lists, and even other data such as name spellings and ages.

In the Virginia Emigrants database, the term for the role of an “emancipator” is only used to describe a person who manumitted an enslaved person through a deed or will recorded in the county courthouse, as was required by Virginia law.

Within these deeds and wills there are further distinctions regarding emancipations. Some deeds and wills provided for an outright immediate or delayed manumission with no contingencies beyond timing of freedom. Some deeds and wills granted freedom under the contingency that the enslaved person must emigrate to Liberia4 —if they remained in the U.S. they remained in slavery, or if they returned to Virginia from Liberia they were re-enslaved according to law5. Here are the terms and their definitions for various types of roles of persons involved with colonization as used in the Virginia Emigrants database:

Some emigrants in the database are noted as enslavers because they purchased their spouse and/or children, or others. Evidence of the purchase can be noted in various records such as the ship list, in letters, and sometimes in a deed of bill of sale in the county courthouse records. The purchased spouse and/or children were still enslaved according to Virginia law at the time of emigration, unless a deed was recorded in the courthouse for their manumission.6

The recordkeeping needs of the ACS regarding emigrants changed over time-influenced by various factors. By ACS design, in most of the first decade, only free people of color were emigrating. Then in the mid to late 1820s, it became apparent that free people were not being convinced to emigrate in the numbers Virginians had hoped. The ACS began encouraging enslavers to send their enslaved people to Liberia instead of manumitting them to remain in the U.S. More research is necessary, but so far it appears that the first enslaved emigrants sailed on the Ship Indian Chief from Norfolk in March 1826. They were 10 persons enslaved by Rev. John D. Paxton of Prince Edward County, Virginia and one person enslaved by Dr. Webb, of Great Bridge, Norfolk County, Virginia.7 They were followed a year later by 23 people enslaved by David Bullock of Louisa County, Virginia who sailed on the Ship Doris in February 1827 from Norfolk.8 With the aftermath of the Nat Turner insurrection of 1831, the numbers of enslaved emigrants for Liberia increased over the numbers of free Blacks.

Responding to the growing pro-slavery political sentiment of the early 1830s in Virginia, the Virginia legislature in 1833 appropriated annually for five years $18,000 to reimburse for a portion of passage fees for only free Blacks to Liberia.9 Not until 1850 were more funds allocated by the Virginia legislature for the same purpose.10 In 1853 the legislature provided additional funding.11 The 1853 Act created a board to oversee the dispensing of the reimbursements to the ACS.12 None of these funds were available for people manumitted recently for Liberia, and none of these allocations reimbursed for a full passage fee. And there was no reimbursement for six months of support in Liberia that the ACS required for emigrants. The Virginia Legislature's funding helped, but was never adequate to cover anything close to the full costs to emigrants for Liberia.

Letters and other documents:

During research by Marie Tyler-McGraw and Jane Ailes for an article about emigrants from the western Virginia counties that became West Virginia in 1863 over 500 letters and other documents pertaining to those western Virginia counties were located among the ACS records at the Library of Congress and in other resources.13 Citations for those letters and other documents from the western Virginia counties are included in the Virginia Emigrants database and cited for each person to whom they refer. Letters and other documents for other counties in Virginia will gradually be added as more project funding is available. For now, the cited documents for the western Virginia counties provide an example of the richness of the information that is available in the ACS records and from other sources.

The letters in the ACS records are especially valuable for information about individual emigrants, their lives, relationships, and circumstances. Some are written by emigrants themselves, others by people assisting with emigration or expressing support for, or opposition to, the ACS and colonization. Some letters explain emigrants' exact birth dates, legal status, relationships to family left behind or to previous emigrants, arrangements for traveling to the port of embarkation, etc.14

The letter collection in the ACS records is unique in that often both sides of the conversation are present. The letter books for the corresponding ACS secretaries are extant in the ACS record collection at the Library of Congress. The collection also contains letters written by emigrants in Liberia to the ACS office in Washington, D.C.

There are instances where a person in the U.S. received a letter from an emigrant, then offered it to the local newspaper for publication. These were most often letters that put a positive spin on emigration and gave encouraging descriptions of emigrants’ new lives in Liberia. The ACS selected many of these letters from emigrants for publication in their monthly journal the African Repository which had a wide distribution in the U.S. The lists of its subscribers are in the ACS records at the Library of Congress. Likewise, the Maryland State Colonization Society published letters in their journal, Maryland Colonization Journal, including some letters from Virginia emigrants. Numerous letters and articles from these periodicals are cited in the Virginia Emigrants database.

Events:

Lives of emigrants are recorded in the Virginia Emigrants database as a series of events. Life events are items such as birth, marriage, and death; and emigration from the home county to Liberia, passage on a particular ship to Liberia, emancipation by deed or will, purchasing self or others, etc. Here is a complete list of event types and their descriptions:

Each event notation is supported by a citation for the document(s) from which the information was gleaned.

Notes

1. Available imaged online at Fold3.com and as microfilm and original documents at the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The finding aid for the collection is here: https://findingaids.loc.gov/exist_collections/ead3pdf/mss/2009/ms009329.pdf Return
2. Available imaged online through the Maryland State Archives website, and as microfilm and original documents at the Maryland Center for History and Culture, Baltimore, Maryland. http://speccol.msa.maryland.gov/pages/speccol/microfilm.aspx?speccol=5977. The finding aid is located at the beginning of the first microfilm reel. Return
3. William W. Henings, The Statues at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia from the First Session on the Legislature, in the year 1619 (Richmond: For the Editor, 1823) vol. 11, Chapter 21, An Act to authorize the Manumission of Slaves, p. 39; imaged online (https://vagenweb.org/hening/vol11-02.htm : accessed 8 Jun 2023). Return
4. Margaret See to Peter and Phillis and their children: Samuel, Catherine, Aaron, Fanny, Rachael, Sarah, Robert, Elean, and Eliza, deed of manumission on condition of emigration to Liberia, Randolph Co., West Virginia Deed Book 18: 218-219, signed 20 Nov 1849, recorded 26 Nov 1849. Return
5. Ted Maris-Wolf, Family Bonds: Free Blacks and Re-enslavement Law in Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2015), Chapter 5, To Liberia and Back, p. 121. Return
6. Fanny Weeks manumitted her husband Samuel Weeks in a deed in which she also explains how and from whom she purchased him. Jefferson Co., West Virginia Deed Book 17: 31-32, signed 16 Jul 1831, recorded 18 Jul 1831. Return
7. “Departure of the Ship Indian Chief. [From the Norfolk Beacon]”, African Repository and Colonial Journal, vol. 1, no. 12 (Feb 1826): 369. Return
8. See the Virginia emigrants database for many citations regarding the enslaved of David Bullock. Return
9. Virginia General Assembly, “An Act, Making Appropriations for the Removal of Free Persons of Color,” Incoming Correspondence, Domestic Letters, American Colonization Society Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, microfilm reel 17; digital image, Fold3.com (https://www.fold3.com/image/30906050: accessed 8 Jun 2023). Return
10. “Virginia - Act making appropriations for the removal of free people of colour, 1850”, Business Papers, 186-1963, Subject File, 1792-1964, American Colonization Society Records, Manuscript Div., Library of Congress, Washington, DC, microfilm reel 312; digital image, Fold3.com (https://www.fold3.com/image/31630011 : accessed 26 Jun 2023). Return
11. J. W. Lugenbeel (Washington, D.C.) to Nathaniel C. Crenshaw (Hanover Court House, Hanover Co., Virginia), letter, 28 Oct 1853; Outgoing Correspondence, Domestic Letters, American Colonization Society Records, Manuscript Div., Library of Congress, Washington, DC, microfilm reel 196; digital image, Fold3.com (https://www.fold3.com/image/31476209: accessed 6 Jun 2023). Return
12. The original Journal of the Proceedings of the Colonization Board of Virginia for the years 1853 through 1858 can be found on the Library of Virginia webpage, Virginia Untold: The African American Narrative. https://lva.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01LVA_INST/br4o1h/alma9917829135905756 The finding aid for the collection is here: https://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=lva/vi04862.xml Return
13. Jane Ailes and Marie Tyler-McGraw, “Leaving Virginia for Liberia: Western Virginia Emigrants and Emancipators”, West Virginia History: A Journal of Regional Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Fall 2012): 1-34. Return
14. Jane C. Washington (Blakeley, Charlestown, Jefferson Co., Virginia) to William McLain (Baltimore, Maryland), letter, 15 Feb 1849; Incoming Correspondence, Domestic Letters, American Colonization Society Records, Manuscript Div., Library of Congress, Washington, DC, microfilm reel 58; digital image, Fold3.com (https://www.fold3.com/image/30923131: accessed 18 Oct 2022). Return