Footnote.com to Digitize SC Estate Inventories and Bills of Sale in a Free Collection

-Newly Digitized Records Preserve the Names of More Than 30,000 Slaves -

     We are very excited to announce a collaboration with Footnote.com, the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, FamilySearch and Lowcountry Africana, to digitize every surviving estate inventory for Colonial and Charleston South Carolina from 1732 to 1872, as well as selected Bills of Sale for the same period, in a FREE collection!

     When the project is complete, the names of more than 30,000 enslaved ancestors from Charleston and surrounding counties will be restored to history in a free online collection, preserved for generations to come. The South Carolina Department of Archives and History holds the original records and has provided access to them and given their kind permission to place them on the Internet, FamilySearch International donated the copies of the microfilms to be digitized, Footnote.com contributed the time and expense to digitize the films and host the collection, and we in the research community can index the records to make them fully searchable. 

The Power of YOU! To Volunteer, Please Fill In the Sign Up HERE!

     It will take many willing hands to index the records to make them fully searchable. Every name and place that we index in a document will enable researchers to discover that document via a Google (or other search engine) search, and viaFootnote.com's search engine.

     If each of us indexed 10 pages of this free collection, they would be searchable in no time! We would like to challenge [OK, beg, :0) ] each of our friends in the research community to index 10 pages of this remarkable collection. Your contribution will make an enormous difference in making these records accessible. 

     To volunteer, please fill in the sign up form HERE. We will contact you to show you how to get started. Don't worry, we will teach you everything you need to know to index records. 

     Thank you so much for helping bring these extraordinary records online in a FREE collection. The ancestors must be smiling!