“Unknown No Longer: A Virginia Slave Name Database” was launched by the Virginia Historical Society in the fall of 2011. The database contains information about slaves, including records kept by slave owners in Virginia.
According to the “Unknown No Longer” website at http://unknownnolonger.vahistorical.org/, “This database is the latest step by the VHS to increase access to its varied collections relating to Virginians of African descent."
Thanks to a generous grant from Dominion Resources and the Dominion Foundation, the Virginia Historical Society launched the project in January 2011. The database seeks to lift from the obscurity of unpublished historical records as much biographical detail as remains of the enslaved Virginians named in those documents. In some cases there may only be a name on a list; in others more details survive, including family relationships, occupations, and life dates.
The project certainly is not complete. The database presently contains more than 1,500 slave names and the society is constantly adding more names. It will take years to scour the millions of documents likely to contain the names of the enslaved.
“Unknown No Longer: A Virginia Slave Name Database” is available free of charge at http://unknownnolonger.vahistorical.org/.
