USGenWeb Archives

The Wake County USGenWeb Archives are part of a project that was developed to provide transcriptions of public domain documents on the World Wide Web. To learn how you can share your Wake County information with other researchers, see Submitting Your Files below.

Click on the following categories to search for available documents pertaining to your Wake County ancestors:

• Bible Records
• Bicentennial Series
• Biographies
• Cemeteries
• Census Records
• Court Records
• Deeds & Land Records
• History
• Letters
• Marriages
• Military Records
• Newspapers
• Obituaries
• Postcards
• Vitals (deaths)
• Will & Estate Records

IMPORTANT NOTE -- With the move of the archives of the GenWeb project to a different server, besides the links above which have been updated, there may be links below that need to be updated.  If you find a broken link, please e-mail djohnson01@nc.rr.com. And, remember that you can always search on the "title" below and locate the referenced information.

• Allen Family Files (provided by Carla Townsend)
  Elizabeth Allen Death Certificate
  Elizabeth Ray Allen Gravestone
  Elsie Allen Tower
  Eugene N Allen Death Certificate

  Henrietta Allen Marriage Certificate

• Joel Lane, Pioneer and Patriot (a biography) -- Note: At the parent site (Patriot Library, BYU), you can search on Raleigh, “Wake County,” “North Carolina,” or other topics will yield many family genealogies with ties to the area.
• Strickland Scene 
• Denmark Photo Studies -- features over 7,500 Raleigh residents

• Marriage Records: 1869-99 & 1900-30 / Some Listings: "Colored Marriage Registery"

• Cemetery Records –

  + The cemetery records for Mt. Hope (Allen Dew’s web-site), African-American Cemetery in Raleigh created 1872,  

  + Tombstone Inscriptions of Blacks in the City Cemetery, Raleigh, N. C. , which is a part of African-American Cemeteries Online (including Wake County) --             

• Slave Narratives at UNC -- includes,  Lunsford Lane, Rev Morgan London Latta and others  

• Articles:

  o Pritchford, Shirley. “Thomas J. Pritchford Slave List.” North Carolina Genealogical and Historical Society Quarterly 5:2 (Summer 1990). Call # fE185.93.N6N67. Bible record of Thomas Pritchford of Wake County.

  o   -----. “Free Black Inhabitants of Wake County, North Carolina.” JAAHGS 1:2 (2nd floor open shelf).

• Barnes Family Wills and Jordan Family Wills etc -     

• Afrigeneas … put in “Wake County” and you find entries like:

  o   Slaves in Deed Bond from Reynolds Allen, Wake County, NC, 1780-1789

  o   Slaves in Will of William Allen, Wake County, NC, Oct. 29, 1774

  o   NORTH CAROLINA PLANTATIONS

  o   Enslaved Ancestors - 1746-1828 | O-Z

  o   Enslaved Ancestors - 1746-1828 | H-N

  etc ….

• Freedman's Bureau -- look under “Reports of Outrages and Arrests” and search on Wake County 

• Sankofagen Wiki, is a growing collection of freely accessible genealogical and historical data pertaining to U.S.A. antebellum plantations, farms, factories, manors, etc. that used African slave labor. Click on “North Carolina” and the list for Wake County includes these plantations. However as of 1/17/2009 none of the plantation links currently have any information noted. They do appear to be asking for information if you have something to contribute.

  • Sam Brodie Plantation - Brodie
  • Joel Lane Plantation - Lane
  • Midway Plantation
  • Neuse Plantation - Dunn
  • Wake Forest Plantation - Dunn

• Wake County library African-American resources  

• Latta Plantation   

• Wake County Estate Records (these can be found at both the NC archives and the Olivia Raney Local History Library) … these are probably the single greatest resource for this type of research.  Currently an index does not yet exist to the contents of this collection è though a project to do this is underway at ORL 

• Wake County Deed Records (these can be found at both the NC archives and the Olivia Raney Local History Library and deeds back to about 1900 are now available online at the Wake County Register of Deeds) … these are probably the second best resource.  Since slaves were treated as property, many deeds are “Bill of Sale” (BOH) items where slaves are being bought and sold. 

• Mollie Huston Lee Collection

• Dr. Barnetta McGhee White Publications -- 1. Enslaved Ancestors Abstracted From Deed Books, etc. Vol. I and Vol. II (on-line version, listed by Slaveholders' surnames) and 2. “Somebody Knows My Name - Marriages of Free People in North Carolina County by County.”

• 1898 Wilmington Race Riot

• Free African-Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware (and some other states)

• North Carolina History Project, Freedmen’s Bank

• Selected Research Material in ORL Relating to African-American Genealogical Research  (created 2004)

• Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938  contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves.

• African-American Resource (via Access)  -- the North Carolina African American Cemetery Records is a nice compilation (and includes Wake County)

• Race, Slavery and Free Blacks – Petitions to Southern Courts, 1775-1867, http://www.lexisnexis.com/academic/guides/Aaas/SlaveryPetitions.pdf and http://www.lexisnexis.com/academic/guides/Aaas/slavpet0201.pdf  (this microfilm collection is part of the African American Studies Microform Collection Guide, http://www.lexisnexis.com/academic/guides/Aaas/)

• African American Genealogy Resources (via FamilySearch)  -- a new web page launched to focus on this research area – soon to have presentations from the recent AAHGS (Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society) conference + in-depth guide focusing on 1870 to the present

• African-American Newspapers and Periodicals: A National Bibliography & Microfilm Index  

Submitting Your Files

The USGenWeb Archives are an excellent way to share documents and information about your ancestors. Any document containing genealogical material may be submitted and will be placed in the Archives for the county or counties that are mentioned in the document.

Please submit your files to Guy Potts, the Archives File Manager for Wake County. The following guidelines apply:

• All material must be in ASCII Text (Plain text, MS DOS Text, Windows Notepad TXT files) to be placed in the Archives. If you have any questions about this format, please ask the File Manager for assistance.
   

• Documents that are from copyrighted material cannot be posted unless there is written authorization from the copyright holder.
   

• Copyright to data contributed resides with the contributor, who agrees that the USGenWeb Archives, as a not-for-profit project, has permanent use of the data.
   

• Personal genealogical records, such as GEDCOMs and Family Group Sheets, will not be posted in the Archives.
   

• Please read the additional information that can be found at Guidelines.