Historic Natchez Enslaved Mississippians

The Adams County, Mississippi, pre-Civil War probate files are a treasure trove of information about the local enslaved population. The files contain information about approximately 20,000 enslaved individuals, with about 80% of them identified by name. The Adams County Courthouse has never had a fire, so the files survive intact from the 18th century through the Civil War. During that time, Natchez, the only municipality within Adams County, became one of the wealthiest cities in the country. With a long growing season, its long-established history as a port city on the Mississippi River, and its geographic position in the center of the country’s richest cotton-growing land, the town of Natchez and its surrounding plantation area was positioned to benefit from the cotton boom. In 1992, the Historic Natchez Foundation began to store and manage historic legal records for Natchez and Adams County. These records have largely been processed but are not digitized. Probate records are legal documents concerning the estate of deceased persons. Probate records from 1799-1870 comprise the bulk of the collection and subject matter for digitization. This range includes deed receipts, deeds of conveyance, bills of sale, wills, personal estate records, court proceedings, and other documents which are indicative of the involvement of enslaved persons. This grouping of probate records fills ten five-drawer filing cabinets, approximately, 100 linear feet. Additionally, the collection is accompanied by probate inventory volumes. The dataset captured a large amount of information from these files and has 45 fields. They are: repository; book or volume; case number; page(s); document type; date recorded; county and state; plantation or other location; owner’s full name; the buyer’s full name; the full name of the enslaved person; the enslaved’s gender, age, race or color; the enslaved’s family or family information; consideration; amount; currency; group sale; enslaved’s occupation or skills; any other description of the enslaved; notes; and any additional records. The data was entered into a spreadsheet exactly as it appeared in the records. Creating this dataset makes this immense resource available for research and other purposes, including genealogy.