Ancestry releases 4 million British colonial slavery records online

Nearly 4 million records documenting enslaved people across 20 former British colonies are now searchable online. The collection, known as the Former British Colonies Enslavement Registers, spans the years 1813 to 1840.

Digitized by Ancestry in partnership with University College London’s Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, the project utilizes approximately 300,000 pages of original manuscripts held by the UK National Archives. The records cover various locations, including Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Trinidad, Mauritius, and the Cape of Good Hope.

Originally created by the British government following the 1807 abolition of the transatlantic slave trade to monitor enslaved populations and prevent illegal trafficking, these documents are now being used to help descendants of the African diaspora trace disrupted family histories. The entries include names, ages, origins, physical descriptions, family connections, births, deaths, and changes in ownership. The collection is accessible via a free Ancestry account.