Kinfolkology’s Data
Oceans of Kinfolk is a database, built by Jennie K. Williams, of the coastwise traffic of enslaved people in the antebellum United States. Oceans of Kinfolk currently includes the names of more than 63,000 enslaved men, women and children trafficked to New Orleans from domestic ports between 1818 and 1860.
Louisiana Kindred is a database of enslaved people who were sold in antebellum New Orleans. It is a work in progress, meaning it is still under construction and data entry is ongoing. Louisiana Kindred’s lead author and Editor in Chief is Jennie K. Williams.
As a database of remembrance, Remembering Kinfolk will be designed in partnership with Descendants to hold oral histories, family photographs, written testimonies and other materials honoring enslaved ancestors. Remembering Kinfolk will therefore challenge data’s almost exclusive association, within the context of slavery studies, with the quantitative violence of enslavers’ records, and resituate enslaved people within the relational and familial networks in which they lived and which—in memory—they remain.