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New Jersey Slavery Records New!

The New Jersey Slavery Records project builds on the work of Rutgers historians who took a deep dive into the historical connections between slavery and the university and wrote the book Scarlet and Black, Volume 1: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History, edited by Deborah Gray White and Marisa Fuentes. The researchers went on to trace Rutgers Black history to the present in Volumes 2 and 3. Following the publication of the Scarlet and Black books, archival materials documenting African American history at Rutgers from slavery to the twentieth century have been compiled and published in the Scarlet and Black Digital Archive, curated by Dr. Jesse Bayker. In the course of this research, the Scarlet and Black team learned that Rutgers Special Collections and University Archives hold a treasure trove of documents that illuminate the history of slavery in Middlesex County beyond the walls of the university. These documents describe hundreds of events in the lives of enslaved people who lived in surrounding communities. Dr. Bayker began compiling a dataset of names and events related to these archival records. From this original dataset, Dr. Bayker began developing a digital project to create a searchable database of slavery-era records that would reach beyond Rutgers. From 2021 to 2024, Dr. Bayker worked on developing the New Jersey Slavery Records dabatase while serving as the digital archivist at the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. A team of undergraduate and graduate students at the institute assisted with transcribing sources, collecting data, and digitizing archival documents to expand the database.

Northeast Slavery Records Index

NESRI is an online searchable compilation of records that identify individual enslaved persons and enslavers in the states of New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.