Enslaved People Project brings humanity to Macon’s forgotten history

For nearly 200 years, deed books detailing the transactions of enslaved people remained tucked away inside the Bibb County courthouse.

In 2013, Superior Court Clerk Erica Woodford finally uncovered this long forgotten piece of Macon history.

Within the clerk’s office mezzanine, she discovered 18 deed books — each 1,000 pages — documenting both human and non-human transactions. 

Enslaved individuals were appraised and given a numerical value. They were considered property, similar to land or belongings. 

For example, one transaction document reads: “A negro fellow by the name of Sam about 23 years old ($500)”.

“I was shocked. I literally couldn’t move,” Woodford said, recalling the deed books. “I had to read it again, just to make sure that I saw what I thought I saw.”

An entry that resonated with her, detailed the sale of a “mulatto” baby less than a year old by a white woman as “repentance” for bearing a child with a Black man.

Enslaved individuals were woven into all aspects of life in Macon at the time. They were used by the county to build roads and construct railroads, Woodford said, and these particular documents provide insight into urban slavery.

Deeds for enslaved individuals in Bibb County dated from 1823 to December 1, 1865 — two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed and 10 months after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery.  

Slavery and the history of Africans in America is a vital part of American history, Woodford said. People learn about slavery in school, but not about the detailed transactions.

“You don’t get the full concept of ownership until you look at a deed,” she said.

Launching the Enslaved People Project

Woodford wanted to make such records easily accessible to the public, which gave rise to the Enslaved People Project — a collaborative effort between Mercer University and the county courthouse to index, digitize and create a database of the documents.

“We came up with Enslaved People Project because we want to focus on that they’re people. They’re not slaves,” Woodford said. “I just wanted to make sure that we respect the people that are in these records, that we give them life and humanize them.”

Retired Mercer professor and director of the university’s African American studies program Chester Fontenot Jr. received two grants for students to participate in a summer research opportunity.

In 2018, Fontenot and his students began going through the 18 deed books and identifying enslaved people’s transactions. The team indexed the data in a spreadsheet and digitized the original 19th century documents to be uploaded to the court’s database.

The research team found translating old, cursive writing presented a challenge, Fontenot said, and the work also took an emotional toll on the group.

“[These aren’t] just words on the page,” he said of the documents’ dark reality. “This is not a story that’s being told.”

One discovery that stood out to Fontenot was documentation showing that the city commission once granted the mayor’s request to purchase eight enslaved individuals at $700 each.

Despite having to take mental breaks to grapple with the weight of such historical documents, Fontenot and the Mercer students continued to index the information for scholars, genealogists and students to access in the future.

“The importance there is that we structure our own narratives” he said. “The narrative of the dominant folks who, in fact, [did] the enslaving, is what we’ve had access to.”

Fontenot led indexing for two summers with a total of four students, some of whom Woodford later hired as clerk interns where they continued their work. All the digital scans of the original deed pages are available to the public on the courts’ record hub.

Putting the puzzle together

Julie Grimm worked as real estate clerk in the county courthouse, indexing and cataloging property ownership documents.

“Real estate is like a family tree,” she said. 

Grimm built upon the work of Fontenot and the students by transcribing each historical slavery deed and finding other documents that offer historical context.

She compiled information on the  sellers and buyers as well as documents like wills, marriage settlements and loans. 

Enslaved individuals were used in all forms of financial transactions, Grimm said. If someone defaulted on a loan, an enslaved person may be used as collateral. 

She even found old newspaper clippings for sheriffs’ sales of enslaved people that would have taken place on Poplar Street.

Grimm, who was going through chemotherapy for breast cancer, called the experience “cathartic.”

“That gave me something else to concentrate on, instead of me and how I looked and how I felt,” she said. “These people were being sold.”

Grimm worked on the project for more than a year and found the tragic details — babies being sold and families being split up — hard to take.

She recalled finding wills that promised an enslaved person’s freedom, but later uncovering documents proving that the individual was never granted what they were promised. Grimm remembers reading about an enslaved woman in her seventies with the dollar amount of 0 written next to her name. 

“These are still people,” she said. “How do you treat a human being like there’s no value?”

Of the nearly 1,000 deeds, Grimm has indexed 350 transactions which could each contain one or multiple enslaved individuals. There are still another 700 deeds to be transcribed and uploaded to the organized database. 

The work will continue and the database represents a “living, breathing site” as more information is added, Woodford said. 

The database offers folks in Macon a way to connect with their heritage. 

Chief Deputy Clerk Stephanie Woods Miller learned through the Enslaved People Project that her fourth great grandfather was enslaved in Macon.

“To know that there are people who have suffered,” she said. “And that we were the descendants of people who survived — It makes you stand up a little straighter.”

Visit Recordhub.cottsystems.com/home/index to access the record database.