The “Enslaved by” association is one of the most important recent additions to FamilySearch for African American genealogy. Rather than forcing an enslaved person into a biologically incorrect family relationship, it allows Family Tree to record the historical relationship between an enslaved person and an enslaver while preserving both individuals as separate people.
How it works
FamilySearch implemented Enslavement as one of its Other Relationships. This means it is not a parent-child or spouse relationship.
Instead, the relationship simply states:
John Smith was enslaved by William Jones.
or, from the other perspective,
William Jones enslaved John Smith.
This relationship appears alongside other non-family relationships such as:
- Household
- Neighbor
- Employer
- Apprentice
- Godparent
- Relative
- Enslavement
What information can be recorded?
Once the “Enslaved by” relationship is created, you can edit it to include:
- date of enslavement
- place
- emancipation date
- explanatory notes
- attached sources
For example:
Relationship
- Enslaved by: William H. Johnson
- Enslavement: Dallas County, Texas, 1858
- Emancipation: Dallas County, June 1865
These facts belong to the relationship, not necessarily to either person’s timeline.
Why this is valuable
Before this feature existed, genealogists had several poor options:
- incorrectly add the enslaver as a parent
- create fictitious family relationships
- mention the enslaver only in notes
- omit the information entirely
The new association preserves the historical reality without implying biological or legal kinship.
An example
Suppose an 1856 probate record states:
“I leave to my daughter Mary the negro woman Sarah and her children Benjamin and Rachel.”
You could build the tree as follows:
Sarah
├── Benjamin
└── Rachelusing normal biological relationships.
Then create an Enslaved by relationship from:
- Sarah → Mary Smith
- Benjamin → Mary Smith
- Rachel → Mary Smith
If evidence later shows the family had previously belonged to Mary’s father, you could document successive enslavement relationships with dates and sources.
What if the family relationships are unknown?
This is where the feature is especially useful.
Suppose a plantation inventory lists:
- Isaac
- Charlotte
- Moses
- Eliza
with no indication of how they were related.
You can:
- create four separate people,
- link each one to the enslaver using Enslaved by, and
- leave their biological families unknown until evidence is found.
Later discoveries can add spouses, parents, and children without changing the enslavement relationships.
What if the enslaver was also the biological father?
Unfortunately, that happened frequently.
FamilySearch explicitly recommends recording both facts if supported by evidence:
- biological father (Parent-Child relationship)
- enslaver (Other Relationship → Enslavement)
This preserves both the genealogical and historical record.
Why this matters for African American genealogy
For researchers of African American families, the identity of an enslaver is often one of the strongest clues to an ancestor’s identity before 1870. Once an enslaver is identified, researchers can search:
- probate files
- wills
- estate inventories
- plantation journals
- bills of sale
- county court records
- tax rolls
- deed books
Many of these records name enslaved individuals and sometimes entire family groups.
