We welcome support for the Northeast Slavery Records Index (NESRI), which focuses on enslavement records in the northeast states from Pennsylvania to Maine. Donations are tax-deductible and are spent for students who work on the database and for costs to maintain the website and the database technology.

You can donate online at the John Jay College Donation Page. Use the designation tab to dedicate your gift to the “Northeast Slavery Records Index.” The funds are maintained in an account dedicated to NESRI.

Larger Donations

As NESRI expands, costs to maintain and expand the database increase. We have received competitive awards, such as $100,000 from the  American Council of Learned Societies. Our strategic financial goal is to provide sustainable funding to maintain NESRI through an endowment.

The following are examples of research projects which would advance information-based scholarship about slavery in our northeast states across the nation. Research questions could include:

• What is the general state of the records we have located, and what can be done to preserve them?
• Are there more record collections that we have not yet located and indexed? (We are sure there are!)
• What happened to the enslaved persons who emigrated to Nova Scotia after the Revolutionary War?
• Can we identify more owners and investors for slaveships delivering enslaved people to the northeast?
• Why are their slave trade transaction records in the Louisiana Slave Trade Database for enslaved persons born in northeast states?
• What existing buildings  were occupied by enslaved people?
• Can we document more instances of enslaved people in northeast states being “sold south” when the eventual abolition of slavery was becoming more likely?

We also expect to receive requests for assistance from communities seeking to understand their records. Today, our small team is unable to respond to all of these requests with the depth of research they deserve.

Therefore, we would welcome substantial grants and gifts that support major projects and services and that might endow a fund for  permanent support of the project. You can reach us at nbenton@jjay.cuny.edu or jlpeters@jjay.cuny.edu.