1867 voter lists gave slaves' last names http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1081847818306640.xml Birmingham News 1867 voter lists gave slaves' last names 04/13/04 DAVID WHITE News staff writer MONTGOMERY - In faded black ink etched on yellowed paper, cursive handwriting records the names of about 100,000 blacks and 60,000 whites who registered to vote in Alabama in 1867, two years after the Civil War. The names are listed in county-by-county books kept for decades in the Capitol basement and now stored nearby in the state archives building. The registration books, many of them two feet wide and three feet tall, are some of the earliest listings of the last names of black men in Alabama who had been slaves just a few years before and hadn't had last names. State archivists are photographing book pages and typing names and other information from them into a computer database. The work may take two years to finish, said Tracey Berezansky, assistant director for government records at the archives. But she said information for Winston and Wilcox counties should be available online within a few months at www.archives.state.al.us, the Internet home page of the Alabama Department of Archives and History. Information from other counties will follow. Archives Director Ed Bridges predicts the online listings from the books will be a boon to genealogists, especially people whose ancestors were slaves. "This is during the period when those who didn't have a legal last name were choosing for themselves their last names," Bridges said. "It'll reflect the population of the state as the state settled out again after the Civil War." Gained right to vote: The registration books commemorate when blacks in Alabama gained the right to vote, a right imposed on a defeated, one-time Confederate state by occupying Union troops who enforced laws passed by the U.S. Congress. In Pike County, the people who registered to vote in 1867 included S.H. Williams, Thomas Walton, Joseph Wilson and other whites as well as Sip Smith, Jim Weed, Holland Williams, Friday White, Moses Wynn and other blacks. Women couldn't vote, but any man 21 or older who had lived in Alabama for at least 12 months could qualify regardless of property ownership or military service. A few decades later, Alabama's Constitution of 1901 imposed property, literacy and poll tax requirements that greatly restricted voting by blacks and poor whites. Besides the name, county, precinct and election district of each man who qualified to vote, the registration books list the number of the loyalty oath that each man, white or black, had to take before he could register. Federal law barred from voting anyone who was a legislator, member of Congress, judge or other officeholder before the Civil War who then "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States." Everyone else, before they could vote, had to sign an oath to "faithfully support the Constitution and obey the laws of the United States." Those county-by-county oath books also are kept at the archives. Many men in 1867 were illiterate and marked the oaths with an X. Registrars signed their names by their marks. Bob Booth, a black man, on Aug. 5, 1867, made his mark on oath number 2174, recorded on page 87 of the third oath book for the second precinct of Autauga County. Joseph Basill, a white man, made his mark the same day on oath number 2198, recorded on page 99 of the same book. Michael Fitzgerald, a historian of the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War, said putting the registration information online should be a big help to historians, but especially to people tracing their family histories. "For people who are trying to find their ancestors, especially, I expect, for African-Americans, this would be one of the first places you would find names of individuals," said Fitzgerald, who teaches at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn. He said blacks weren't listed by name in any U.S. census through 1860 unless they were free. "You run into a brick wall in terms of trying to trace ancestors, with slavery," Fitzgerald said. Most blacks were slaves: Some free blacks, who had first and last names, did live in Alabama before the Civil War, especially in Mobile County, but slaves far outnumbered free blacks. Fitzgerald said slaves had little use for a last name because they had few rights. Slaves under Alabama law could not enter into contracts, lend money, own a horse or dog, buy liquor or leave a plantation without a written pass, according to the 1994 book "Alabama: The History of a Deep South State." But when ex-slaves after the Civil War gained full rights as U.S. citizens under federal law, Fitzgerald said, they often took the last names of former masters, or took famous last names such as Jefferson or Lincoln. "What happened at the end of the war, suddenly people had to have a legal last name," Fitzgerald said. "And they ran out and picked one." Information from other counties down the alphabet will also go online as it is typed in and proofed, Berezansky said. Once the names are online, people will be able to click on a name and see the image of each listing from its registration book. People will be able to search for a person by last name and home county. Archives library technician Dianne Jackson is slowly but surely typing voter information into the database, among her other jobs. She said the Spencerian handwriting common in America in the 1860s is generally easy for her to read, except that M sometimes looks like W, and a lower-case s sometimes looks like ee or oo. A question mark: If she can't clearly identify a letter, even after using a Spencerian script guide, Jackson said she puts a question mark by the word. "You really have to concentrate on what you're looking at," she said. "We do quite a bit of question marks." The 1867 database will join several others already available online at the archives home page, under "Search our databases." They include a list of the roughly 2,000 Alabamians who died in service during World War I. Computer users may search for a person by last name, branch of service, military unit, race, hometown and county. Another database lists Alabamians who fought in the Civil War. The listing so far includes 106,000 entries on veterans whose last names began with A through K. Some people have more than one entry. Finishing the Civil War database likely will take several more years, archives officials said. Computer users may search for a Civil War veteran by last name, branch of service, regiment or company. Some listings include the person's rank, battle history and dates of service.