Wake County Register of Deeds launches Enslaved Persons Project, uncovering hidden histories

For some Black Americans, the only records of their ancestors are documented on paper, showing how much they were sold for and to what slave owner.

WRAL reported about the Wake County Register of Deeds Enslaved Persons Project two years ago when the county needed volunteers.

Flipping through the pages of history brings a different emotion with each page turn.

"It's hard. There's not a better word to describe it. It's hard on volunteers. It's hard on volunteers on their eyes, it's hard on their hearts, it's hard on their minds," Tammy Brunner, Wake County Register of Deeds, said.

The book is just one of more than 30 roughly 800-page documents revealing the hard truths of the past.

"To read what's actually in here. What's being described? The people that are being bought sold and traded and willed as gifts through their children," Brunner said.

Brunner with the Wake County Register of Deeds first began the Enslaved Person's Project in 2021. Over nine months, volunteers began compiling this into an online database, giving Black families across Wake County a chance to find their roots.

"There's no record of birth, deaths, or marriages. In some cases, you can finally find people are in census records but not in any of the other records," Brunner said.

They found 3100 records of enslaved people that were bought, sold and traded in Wake County.

"To begin to link together their family trees to find their identity to uncover what's been covered up so long," Buzille said.

Buzille has guided many of the volunteers in the project, piecing together a digital footprint.

"So right on our main landing page, there is a button called the enslaved persons search and you click on that and you go right to all the deeds that we pulled out from this project," Buzille said.

People from across the country have contacted them about this tool, which has also become helpful for experts too.

"A trained genealogist can get a lot of information from these pages and novice genealogists can find and learn some information that might spur them on to learn more," Buzille said.

Their research led them to learn about Isaac Hunter, SR—a shoemaker who had to buy his freedom and later his family's for $2800.

"His enslaver was William Boylan. We all know a neighborhood is named there," Brunner explained. "Even though there is a big push to fix some of these wrongs, I just really didn't put the thought process and how much we really still honor these enslavers."

While this is a huge step forward in Wake County, similar databases must be constructed nationwide to track down missing information.

"It's something that everybody should have," Buzille said.

Due to the program's success, the Wake County Register of Deeds is now launching a new initiative.

They're exploring how people were prevented from buying or living on certain land in the county because of their race.