Personal information about enslaved Virginians will be searchable in 8 million manuscripts at the Virginia Historical Society in a new project called "Unknown No Longer: A Database of Virginia Slave Names."
A $100,000 grant from Dominion Resources and the Dominion Foundation will fund the creation of the free, online database, which is expected to launch in September with 1,000 names.
"The Unknown No Longer database is the first of its kind and will serve as a national model," said Historical Society president and CEO Paul Levengood in an announcement of the grant.
The unique design and approach will produce the first database of names that relate back to plantations or places of work across all of slaveholding Virginia, said VHS curator of African-American history, Dr. Lauranett Lee, who will oversee the research.
Existing databases profile specific plantations and slave ship manifestos, she said.
VHS records might include names of enslaved people, plantation sites, occupation and family relations and birth, death or sale dates, said VHS chief librarian Frances Pollard.
Unknown No Longer will be searchable by name, gender, location, occupation and plantation. It also will include images of original source documents.
kcalos@timesdispatch.com
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