Documents in this collection differ from the loose documents in the “Free Negro” Registrations collection. Documents in this collection represent pages from bound registers recording free Black and multiracial people of Black descent across Virginia localities. Language for registering as a free person may have originated from a 1748 law for servants and enslaved people.
In 1793, the Virginia General Assembly specified that “free Negroes or mulattoes” were required to be registered and numbered in a book to be kept by the town clerk, which shall specify “age, name, colour, and stature, by whom, and in what court the said negro or mulatto was emancipated; or that such negro or mulatto was born free.” The process was extended to counties in 1803.This bound register often coincided with a loose certificate containing largely the same identifying information. The 1793 and 1803 laws reflect Virginia legislators’ reaction to a quickly growing free Black population across Virginia. Both the registration system and the process of renewal was enforced differently in the various Virginia localities. Thus, the information found in these registers may differ from year to year and across regions.
Although some clerks were already recording such features, an 1834 Act of Assembly made it a uniform requirement to record identifying marks and scars and the instrument of emancipation, whether by deed or will. In some instances, the clerk included additional information not required by law such as date or place of birth, the name of parents or spouses, trades and occupations, or where a person was emancipated. The amount of detail and type of information a clerk chose to record varied by locality and over time
Descriptions included in this dataset are drawn directly from the original documents and may contain language which is now deemed offensive.
