Workshop explains research Courthouse records reveal trove of data about slavery

"I find it distressing that I know there are a lot of people who have bought it, but can't use it," Midlo-Hall said.

However, Saturday's audience was interested in learning what her research had to offer their own family searches or education. "When you go to a certain extent, you have to find the slavery records that, like she said, that's pushed under the table," said Gail Davis, a librarian in Assumption Parish who has been researching her mother's family for the past 15 years.

Louie Ann Hall of Donaldsonville and her mother Ruby Lefort Levy attended the conference on the chance they would hear something about their surname. "We have never seen her family name before, Lefort," Hall said.

Lyman White of Baton Rouge said he had a personal interest in pursuing his own family tree and passing on information to youths.

"Fortunately, growing up I had a complete family," White said. "But we never learned about our culture or history or our family ties." Aisha Domingue, a junior at Smith College in Northhampton, Mass., came home to Louisiana for a few days so she could attend the workshop. She plans on using Midlo-Hall's database for her senior thesis.

When Midlo-Hall started her research, she was surprised by how much information is available about people who were enslaved and that no one else seemed to know it.

At the first courthouse she examined in Pointe Coupee, she learned just how much information was unknown when she asked a clerk for records on slave holdings.

"He said there were no slaves in Pointe Coupee Parish in the 18th century," Midlo-Hall said. To prove his point, Midlo-Hall said, he showed her a census record from the 1700s.

"We opened it and it was almost all slaves," she said. "These were slaves that weren't supposed to exist and if they did exist, there wasn't supposed to be any record."

At another courthouse, she was told the records wouldn't do her any good because they were in French - Midlo-Hall did a lot of translating in her research.

Through support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Midlo-Hall started looking at other courthouse records along the Mississippi River and found a wealth of information outlining slaves' names, ages, family relations, illnesses, if they were involved in revolts and their origin.

"They were overwhelmingly African," Midlo-Hall said.

When looked at collectively, the information she found went against many of the commonly held beliefs about slaves in Louisiana:

An interesting discovery was that although the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in 1808, Louisiana slave origins still show a large number of Africans arriving into the 1820s.

Another belief that doesn't hold up to the record examination is that most Louisiana slaves came from the Caribbean. In fact, she said, the majority of slaves came from Africa and brought their traditions, skills, trades and beliefs with them. Voodoo in Louisiana, she said, is an African introduction to Louisiana since there were enough Haitians in the state to influence beliefs to that extent.

Another commonly held belief is that masters wouldn't purchase people from the same area of Africa for fear that slaves would communicate and start uprisings. "What I'm finding is just the opposite," Midlo-Hall said. Masters chose people from the same areas of Africa so those who had been in Louisiana could help teach newcomers what they needed to know to survive.

A large number of people were brought to Louisiana from the Senegal/Gambia area of West Africa because of the people's skills in growing rice which started the industry here and in other parts of the South. Farming wasn't the only expertise Africans brought with them and records show that leather workers, engravers, metal workers, horse trainers and many more talents were brought to Louisiana through the hands of Africans. "This gets away from this tunnel vision of bringing in ignorant Africans and teaching them. It really was the other way around," Midlo-Hall said.

In examples of the records Midlo-Hall found and translated, one showed an slave inventory which included a listing for Magdelain, a 30-year-old Creole woman who is labeled a "runaway by profession"; Fannie, 24, of the Senegal nation (Wolof) who is listed as a "little bit of a cook" and her Creole son Honore, 5. Midlo-Hall explained that during the 18th century, Creole was the label given to children born in Louisiana of African parents.

Although the definition of Creole has changed over the years, the legacy left by the children of African parents has left a mark on Louisiana, Midlo-Hall said. "Just about everything that is distinctive about Louisiana - Creole cooking, Creole language - all of this was created by slaves in Louisiana who were heavily African and continued to be African," Midlo-Hall said. "What this tells is African culture was much more durable than historians have led us to believe."