Northeast Slavery Record Index

The Northeast Slavery Records Index (NESRI) is an online searchable compilation of records that identify individual enslaved persons and enslavers in the states of New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Click below to see our complete collections for each state:

New York – Maine – New Hampshire – Vermont – Massachusetts – Rhode Island – Connecticut – New Jersey – Pennsylvania

Seal of the Dominion of New England (1686)

NESRI indexes census records, slave trade transactions, cemetery records, birth certifications, manumissions, ship inventories, newspaper accounts, private narratives, legal documents and many other sources. The goal is to deepen the understanding of slavery in the northeast United States by bringing together information that until now has been largely disconnected and difficult to access. This allows for searches that combine records from all indexed sources based on parameters such as the name of an owner, a place name, and date ranges.

NESRI also serves communities seeking to understand their histories of enslavement. Our Community-Locality Reports present enslavement records for a state, county, town or city. While our collection of records is never complete and always growing, our customized report provides a head start in the local research process, identifying records that might otherwise take months or years to locate.

Artificial Intelligence and Slavery Research

by Ned Benton, Co-Director, Northeast Slavery Records Index
June 2023

Can artificial intelligence (AI) locate and assemble fragments of information about an enslaved person and present them in an accurate and coherent narrative? We formulated seven prompts (AI search questions) asking about five specific enslaved people and two localities for which there is significant documentation from the Northeast Slavery Records Index (NESRI) and other internet sources. We submitted the prompts to three AI programs, ChatGTP, Microsoft Bing and Google Bard, and compared the results to descriptions readily available elsewhere. The AI responses ranged from hesitant incompetence to assertive mendacity.

Slavery by Alumni of Colonial Colleges

Note: This project is ongoing; the related article will be updated regularly. The following version is from 2024.

Colleges with colonial (pre-1790) histories have investigated their involvement with slavery during their early years, with the worthy goals of documenting, understanding and possibly making reparations for harm. To date, these studies mostly focus on enslavement activities of college officials living on or near their physical campuses and on the harm inflicted on their nearby communities. Yet the graduates also deserve study, since their greater numbers and geographic dispersal created opportunities to influence many more individuals and communities beyond the immediate neighborhoods of their campuses.

This project cross-references student records from the colonial colleges with those of enslavers in the Northeast Slavery Records Index (NESRI) to identify enslavers who attended these colleges. Additional analyses identify enslavers in the ranks of the colonial clergy, many of whom were alumni of the same institutions.

Why are student enslavers important? Campus officials and faculty members who practiced or condoned enslavement normalized the practice and sent an important educational message to students, who as prestigious alumni brought those values and norms back to their homes or new positions. Thus, slavery on campus could have promoted slavery in both nearby and distant communities. This is particularly probable when the campuses were educating future ministers and religious leaders, as was frequently the case during the colonial era. The students would then be likely to persuasively model, espouse or condone slavery with their congregations and communities.

Colonial College Reports:

Based on our cross-referenced matches, we have developed online reports that include local records of enslavement by college officials or faculty (as reported by the colleges) and regional records by graduates in their home communities. To access a report, select from the list of colonial institutions in the table below.