I received this posting on another listserv and thought it might be on interest. ASSOCIATED PRESS by Raphael G. Satter LONDON -- A genealogy Web site said yesterday that it will post 3 million names of slaves held across the British Empire during the early 19th century, putting hundreds of thousands of pages of searchable information online to help slaves' descendants research their pasts. The project will use registers that the British government created between 1813 and 1834 in an effort to stamp out the slave trade by ensuring plantation owners did not buy new slaves. Britain abolished the trade in 1807. Slavery itself was outlawed in the colonies 17 years later. Information from 700 registers from 23 British territories and dependencies will be made available online, free of charge, Within the next 12 months, said Simon Ziviani, a spokesman for Ancestry.co UK. The database will be searchable by first and last name, island, plantation, age and sex, he said. One of the most exhaustive documents, the 1834 Barbados Slave Register, was posted online by the site yesterday. Slaves generally left few written records, making it difficult to reconstruct their lives, Ziviani said. "Hopefully (the database) will provide a missing piece of the puzzle," he said. The site could help those outside Britain do research not otherwise possible said Mia Morris, founder of Black historical and cultural Web site Blackhistory-month.co.UK. Colonies were required to count slaves and their owners every three years. Records were kept on site and c opies submitted to the Office for the Registry of Colonial Slaves. After the office was disbanded, 200,000 pages of names were placed in the National Archives in Kew, in west London. Kenyatta D. Berry http://www.slavegenealogy.com Rebuilding African American History Sally Rolls Pavia sallypavia2001@yahoo.com List Owner: GENEALOGYBITSANDPIECES-L-request@rootsweb.com Archives: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/GENEALOGYBITSANDPIECES "All incoming and outgoing email checked by Norton Anti-Virus"