JONES COUNTY SLAVE NAME PROJECT

Enslaved residents of Jones County, North Carolina once exceeded fifty percent of the county's total population, yet very little is known about their lives. A major barrier to further research is the difficulty in tracing individual enslaved people by name within the county's extensive collection of historical records. Initiated in 2017, The Jones County Slave Name Project seeks to address this issue. Drawing from county deeds, probate documents and other primary resources, it highlights and draws together key biographical data points allowing for the identification of enslaved individuals across disparate record sets.