How you record enslaved persons in Family Tree depends on what you know about them from your family's history and from historical records, such as estate registers.
You know the family relationships between the enslaved persons
If you know the enslaved persons are related, simply add them to the Tree the same as you would for any other family member.
From there, you can then use the Other Relationships feature to add the name of the slaveholder to each enslaved person. Doing so can make it easier to record other potentially important details. (See Source Documents section below)
You know the slaveholder and names of the enslaved people
Sometimes, all you know is the slaveholder and the names of the enslaved people. The records may not contain enough information for you to identify the family relationships between the enslaved people.
In these cases, you can enter the slaveholder into Family Tree and then enter each of the enslaved persons using the Other Relationships feature.
If you know that some of the enslaved people were related to each other, you can also use the Relative relationship to preserve as many of the connections as possible.
The slaveholder is the biological parent of an enslaved person
If the slaveholder was a biological parent of an enslaved person, you can add them as a biological parent and slaveholder to preserve all historical data about the enslaved person.
Source documents
When you enter information about enslaved persons and slaveholders into Family Tree, please attach or enter your sources whenever possible.
You can add sources to the person, to the relationship, or to both. Sources about people are easier to find than sources attached to relationships. We encourage adding sources in both places. But if you add it to just one, we recommend adding it to the person, where it is easiest for other users to see.
If the source is a historical record on FamilySearch, you can attach it to a person in Family Tree. If the source is not on FamilySearch, you can add it as an outside source by entering a citation and optionally providing a link to the record online or uploading a scanned copy of the document.
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