Hey all,

I just recently joined ancestry.com and was about to trace parts of my family back to the mid/early 1800's. Basically, the last generation born into slavery who were still alive in to be found in the 1870 or 1880 census. Then I hit a brick wall.

Another thing I noticed that while most of my family on both sides come out of Mississippi and Alabama, I kept finding random relatives born in the early/mid 1800's who were born in the upper South but had children before the end of slavery in Mississippi and Alabama. I started to wonder about that because I know Black people (free or slave) weren't just trapsing around all willy-nilly from state to state in the 1840's and 1850's. Well, what I found out is that after the war of 1812, tobacco production decreased in the upper south and many slaves were traded to the deep south (MS,AL, LA) between that time and the start of the civil war to pick cotton as cotton production was increasing in those areas. One source described it as a second middle passage that tore apart many families. My earliest Darling relative was born in 1820s in VA (as were both his parents) but was having children in Alabama in the 1850s. Most likely he was sold away from his family in VA. I've found Slave schedules of a Darling family that owned slaves in VA, but the records only listed gender and age of the slaves but no first names.

My families oral history does not provide further clues so right now I'm stuck and annoyed. And I also see why many African-Americans don't bother. It kind of brings the realizations of slavery close to home and who wants to think about that.

Rant over, thanks for reading.