Self-Emancipation along the Lower Mississippi River in 1863

In June and July of 1863, enslaved people in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, and Wilkinson County, Mississippi, fled to Union gunboats. One of the boat’s clerks recorded demographic information for 960 refugees, including first and last names, ages, birth places, and owners. It is unusual to find such information for enslaved people in the United States, making the dataset a rich source of information for scholars studying the region or for individuals seeking to trace their heritage.