Using AI to Extract Records of Enslaved Ancestors

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Genealogists researching enslaved ancestors often face the painful reality that records are incomplete, inconsistent, and dehumanizing. Enslaved individuals were usually documented only as property in bills of sale, probate inventories, tax rolls, or advertisements. Yet these fragments are essential for reconstructing family histories.

Today, artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a transformative tool in this work. By automating the transcription and recognition of difficult records, AI is helping descendants, historians, and archivists identify and preserve the lives of enslaved individuals hidden in the archives.

Why Slave Records Are Hard to Access

  • Scattered Evidence – References to enslaved people appear across many types of documents: estate inventories, wills, church registers, runaway ads, and shipping manifests.
  • Minimal Identification – Often only first names, ages, or physical descriptions are provided, with no surnames.
  • Handwriting Challenges – 18th- and 19th-century scripts make manual transcription slow and error-prone.

This combination makes it extremely difficult for genealogists to search systematically for enslaved ancestors.

How AI Is Being Applied

Handwriting Recognition

AI-powered paleography tools can transcribe handwritten estate inventories, parish registers, and court records. By scanning thousands of pages, AI can extract mentions of enslaved individuals by name, age, or condition.

Text Mining in Newspapers

Natural Language Processing (NLP) allows AI to search digitized newspapers for runaway slave ads or auction notices, identifying patterns in descriptions even when names are missing.

Record Linking

Machine learning can compare details like age, gender, and location across separate documents to suggest potential matches. For example, a “boy Jim, age 12” in an 1835 probate inventory might be linked to a “Jim, age 17” in an 1840 tax record.

Database Expansion

Projects such as Enslaved.org and Ancestry’s Articles of Enslavement collection are using AI to clean, organize, and expand datasets, making them easier to search for descendants and scholars.

Benefits for Genealogists

  • Faster Access – AI processes thousands of handwritten pages that would take years for human indexers to complete.
  • Searchable Names – Once extracted, names become discoverable through simple searches.
  • Context Building – AI can pull details like occupations, family groupings, and geographic movement into usable genealogical data.

For many descendants, this can be the first step toward reclaiming family connections broken by slavery.

Ethical Considerations

While AI offers powerful possibilities, it must be used responsibly:

  • Respectful Language – AI should present extracted data in ways that recognize the humanity of enslaved people, not simply reproduce dehumanizing terminology.
  • Verification Required – AI extractions are not perfect; genealogists must review and cross-check results against original sources.
  • Community Engagement – Descendant communities should be central in shaping how these records are presented and accessed.

Getting Started with AI-Enhanced Slave Records

  • FamilySearch Get Involved – Volunteer projects where AI transcriptions of historical records are corrected and indexed.
  • Enslaved.org – A growing database of extracted records of enslaved people, using digital tools for accessibility.
  • Ancestry.com – Expanding its enslaved records collections through AI-supported indexing.
  • Local Archives – Many regional collections are beginning to experiment with AI-driven indexing of probate and court documents.

AI is not solving the challenges of slave-era research overnight, but it is making hidden names visible and helping descendants reconnect with their past. Each record extracted is more than data—it is the story of a person whose life mattered, whose name deserves to be remembered, and whose legacy continues through today’s families.

Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade. “About.” Enslaved.org. Accessed September 12, 2025. https://enslaved.org/about/.

Ancestry.com. “Ancestry.com Uses AI to Boost Black Family Trees.” Axios, June 11, 2024. https://www.axios.com/2024/06/11/ancestry-ai-enslavement-newspapers-juneteenth.

“Artificial Intelligence and Slavery Research.” NESRI / CUNY Commons. Accessed September 12, 2025. https://nesri.commons.gc.cuny.edu/artificial-intelligence-and-slavery-research/.

Abdullahi, Aminu. “How AI is Helping Uncover and Preserve Black History and Culture.” eWeek, June 19, 2025. https://www.eweek.com/news/ai-black-history-culture/.

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