An Adelphi assistant professor turned 134 manumission records into a free, searchable resource, giving descendants a new way to trace Black ancestors in early Brooklyn.
Before Brooklyn had brownstones, a navy yard or high-rises, it had farms. 鈥淧icture Brooklyn in the 1700s as acre upon acre of completely flat farmland,鈥� said Christopher Barnes, PhD, assistant professor and digital publishing librarian in the University Libraries, who recently built a large dataset from records of the period. In the 18th century, the borough we now know as Brooklyn, at the time comprising six towns鈥擝rooklyn, Bushwick, Flatbush, Flatlands, Gravesend and New Utrecht, all under the banner of Kings County鈥攚as home to fields of corn, wheat, rye, barley and other grain crops. Farming these crops depended on the labor of enslaved people, making the institution of slavery a key lever of Brooklyn鈥檚 economy.
鈥淲e tend to think of New York and New Jersey as aligned with New England in the North-South slavery divide,鈥� said Dr. Barnes, 鈥渂ut those two states were some of the largest slaveholding areas in the country.鈥� In 1799, New York passed legislation that enshrined the practice of manumission, or legal emancipation from slavery through a formal contract. A number of enslaved people successfully attained their freedom in this way before New York outlawed slavery in 1827. These names survive in the Old Town Records collections, which have been freshly digitized by the New York City Municipal Archives.
On their own, digital images of records are difficult to work with, according to Dr. Barnes. He partnered with Enslaved.org鈥攁n open-source database on the trans-Atlantic slave trade鈥攖o turn a mass of primary source scans into a sophisticated, fully searchable dataset.
(Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation, April 2025) documents Dr. Barnes鈥� efforts to collect, organize and analyze the 134 manumissions on record with Kings County. For Dr. Barnes, each of these instances鈥攁nd the names, dates and biographical details that accompany them鈥攔epresents a crack in the 鈥渂rick wall鈥� of Black American genealogy. With every manumission now searchable through , 鈥渢he descendant of someone who had been manumitted in Brooklyn might finally be able to connect the dots,鈥� he explained.
Once an individual was manumitted, they could be counted in the census, opening up endless genealogical possibilities. The earliest manumission in the collection, from 1797, concerned a man named Cesar or Ceaser Foster, whose trade was listed as 鈥渂utcher.鈥� Dr. Barnes鈥� research revealed that a free Black man named Cesar Foster of roughly the same age lived and worked as a butcher in Albany in 1815. The 1820 national census also listed a Black man named Ceasar Foster living with a woman and child. More research is needed to prove the connection, but, Dr. Barnes said, 鈥淚t鈥檚 proof that the possibilities are there.鈥�
While this particular dataset is complete, Dr. Barnes鈥� genealogical work is not. As the descendant of Long Island slaveholders, he has a personal investment in, as he puts it, using 鈥渨hite genealogy to help recover Black history.鈥� Currently, he is building his own digital humanities project, a website that centers on the lives of the 200- plus individuals once enslaved by his ancestors. Some descendants of those enslaved individuals have even reached out to him, and together they鈥檝e been working to create a shared genealogical tree.
Dr. Barnes is eager to get the Adelphi community involved in the digital preservation of slavery records. For International Open Access Week 2025, he and the managing editor of Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation, Kristina Poznan, PhD, presented to students and faculty on the website鈥檚 commitment to keeping its content free and machine readable. He has also been coordinating with Adelphi鈥檚 Department of African, Black and Caribbean Studies to host a talk on the history of slavery in the area. Next, Dr. Barnes would like to get students working on a dataset that captures manumissions from local historical records, particularly those from a Quaker community in Jericho whose members were abolitionists and frequently manumitted their enslaved workers.
For now, however, he鈥檚 content to imagine different ways to 鈥渃ross-pollinate鈥� as a librarian, scholar and educator. 鈥淢y job is all about open access and digital scholarship, and I got to combine them with my passion for New York City history in this project,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t was a perfect match for my position at Adelphi.鈥�
Frequently Asked Questions
“Manumissions in the Brooklyn Old Town Records Collection, 1797鈥�1825” is a searchable dataset built by Christopher Barnes, PhD, of 茄子视频 Libraries. It covers 134 recorded manumissions in Kings County and was published in the Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation in April 2025. Every record is searchable on .
Manumission is the legal freeing of an enslaved person through a formal contract. In New York, a number of enslaved people gained their freedom this way before the state outlawed slavery in 1827.
Yes. In the 1700s, Brooklyn was made up of farmland across six Kings County towns: Brooklyn, Bushwick, Flatbush, Flatlands, Gravesend and New Utrecht. Farms growing corn, wheat, rye and barley depended on enslaved labor.
Records of enslaved people often lack names and dates, which creates a 鈥渂rick wall鈥� for descendants. Manumission records list names, dates and biographical details. Once freed, people could also be counted in the census, which opens new ways to trace family lines.
All 134 manumissions in the dataset can be searched for free on , an open-source archive on the trans-Atlantic slave trade.