African American Pathfinders
The Carver Museum and Cultural Center is dedicated to the collection, preservation, research, and exhibition of African American historical and cultural materials reflecting all dimensions of experiences of persons of African descent living in Austin, Travis County, Texas, and in the United States. The Texas African American Pathfinder serves as an extension of the museum by providing resources for students, teachers, and others to conduct research using high-quality, web-based information.
This exhibit includes five divisions:
Genealogy
General Resources
Family Search
Created by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the FamilySearch Web site allows users to search its comprehensive database of U.S. Census records, U.S. Social Security and Death Indexes, and Vital Records Indexes. It also offers tips for genealogical research and local resources.
History Detectives - Genealogy
Produced by PBS, the History Detectives genealogy page is a helpful resource for learning about photo identification and preserving family documents and photographs. It also offers a beginner's guide to genealogical research, a beginner's checklist, and links to more resources.
The National Archives - Genealogist/Family Historians
The National Archives has compiled a how-to guide for research on family history and genealogy. It provides tips, advice for solving problems, and links to records. The site is arranged by research topics. Within each topic page, users can link to articles, finding aids, and other helpful information. National Archives holdings include census records, military records, immigration records, and land records.
RootsWeb.com
Created by Ancestry.com, this Web site provides a variety of research tools. These include several searchable databases, mailing lists, message boards, and a keyword search. There are also helpful research guides and links to other resources. Users are encouraged to interact with one another, ask questions, and share their research.
African American and Texas
AfriGeneas
This Web site is designed to promote and provide resources for African American genealogical research. It offers access to census records, death records, marriage records, and slave data records. There are also newspaper articles, family histories, city directories, and research guides. Group forums and chat rooms encourage users to share information.
Austin Genealogical Society
This Web site developed by the Austin Genealogical Society is intended to collect and record family history information for Central Texas. There are several collections of records concerning families from Austin and Travis County, starting with the 1850 census.
Austin History Center - African American Sources
This Web site provided by the Austin History Center is a basic finding aid and allows users to see what type of information is housed within the center's African American collections. The center houses a variety of materials related to African American history, including census information, church histories, periodicals, photographs, and recordings. This site also offers an annotated timeline of events related to desegregation in Austin, as well as a series of video vignettes about local African American history.
The Caribbean Gen Web Project
This Web site offers access to birth records, baptisms, marriage licenses, and burial records for several countries located in the Caribbean. It is intended to be a repository for queries, family histories, records, and links to other resources.
Christine's Genealogy Web site
This Web site offers links to a wide variety of resources, including searchable databases, the National Archives, and Web sites related to African American genealogy. It also provides an overview of current articles about the topic.
Freedmen's Bureau Online
This site contains information and records maintained by the Freedmen's Bureau after the Civil War. Users can search by state to find records of murders and crimes, labor records, and marriage records. There is also a list of related Web sites.
Genealogy - Texas State Library and Archives Commission
A robust site especially useful for those interested in Texas history, the State Library and Archives Commission is complete with links to Vital Statistics Indexes, Index to Confederate Pension Applications, Index to Republic Claims, and more. It also provides links to other government Web sites and information on how and where to find various physical records, including the Texas County Tax Rolls on Microfilm and Texas telephone directories.
Sankofagen Wiki
This Web site presents a collection of genealogical and historical data pertaining to antebellum plantations, farms, factories, manors, and other institutions that used African slave labor. Because it is a wiki, users can contribute to the site and may notice regular updates.
Texas General Land Office - Archives and Records
Established in 1837, these archives consist of land grant records and maps dating to the 18th century. The site offers searchable finding aids for the TGLO collections, which include a Surname Index, Land Grant Database, and Historic Map Collection
Cemeteries
African American Cemeteries Online
The African American Cemeteries Online site assists with genealogical research by providing indexes to cemeteries in more than half the U.S. states. Additionally, it offers links to black churches, funeral homes, and newspapers. The index of death record and obituary databases could also prove useful.
The African Burial Ground
This Web site is dedicated to the African Burial Ground found in 1991 in New York City. The area has since become a National Historic Landmark. The Web site contains information on the African Burial Ground project, the memorial, artwork, the interpretive center, scientific reports, and more.
Cemetery Transcription Library
Located at Interment.net, this site contains transcriptions of burial records and tombstone inscriptions from thousands of cemeteries throughout the world. Users can search by geographical location and explore the special collections. These include national cemeteries, flooded cemeteries, and California mission cemeteries.
Austin Genealogical Society - Travis County Cemetery Survey Project
Maintained by the Austin Genealogical Society, this Web site provides access to a master list of Travis County cemeteries. It lists over a hundred area cemeteries and includes information like driving directions, burial records, and photos of tombstones.
The USGenWeb Project
The volunteer-run USGenWeb Project provides Web sites for genealogical research in every county and state of the United States. Information provided varies according to each site, though most provide links to post queries and access archives.
Credits
The Texas African American Pathfinder is part of the Project in Interpreting the Texas Past. It was produced in the fall of 2005 for the graduate seminar, "Cultural Representations of the Past," taught by Dr. Martha Norkunas. The pathfinder was created by Julie Mosbo, then a graduate student in the School of Information at the University of Texas, and edited by Dr. Norkunas and Sarah Stevens. It is donated to the public domain and full permission is given to use the materials, given the individual permissions and restrictions that may apply to newspaper collections.
Special thanks to Ms. Bernadette Phifer, Curator of the Carver Museum, Faith Weaver, Culture and Arts Education Specialist (Archives) at the Carver Museum, and Karen Riles, Austin History Center Neighborhood Liaison.
The Project in Interpreting the Texas Past (ITP) at the University of Texas at Austin was created by Dr. Martha Norkunas to shed new light on the Texas and American past by researching, interpreting and presenting the histories of women and minority communities. Students have engaged in historical and cultural research and in-depth oral history interviews to create innovative interpretive projects for historic sites, museums, and community organizations all over the state of Texas. For more information about the Project in Interpreting the Texas Past, please contact Dr. Martha Norkunas, m.norkunas@mail.utexas.edu.
ITP is an initiative of the Intellectual Entrepreneurship Consortium, created and directed by Dr. Richard Cherwitz, which is committed to building interdisciplinary, collaborative, and sustainable ways for universities to work with their communities to solve complex problems. For more information, please see: www/ie/https://webspace.utexas.edu/cherwitz/www/ie/.
