A slave schedule is an accounting of enslaved people.
Both the 1850 and 1860 United States Federal Censuses included slave schedules in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah Territory, and Virginia. New Jersey was included in 1850, but not in 1860.
What’s included in slave schedules
The names of most enslaved people were not included in slave schedules. In most cases, people were listed from oldest to youngest, with no evident attempt to record family structures.
The following details were recorded about enslaved people:
- Age
- Sex
- “Color”
- “Fugitive” status
- Whether freed (“manumitted”)
- “Deaf & dumb, blind, insane, or idiotic” status
- Name (rarely, especially when an enslaved person was over 100 years old)
- City, county, and state of residence
The following information was also recorded:
- Name of enslaver
- Number of enslaved people per enslaver
- Date the schedule was taken
- Name of enumerator (census taker)
U.S. slave schedules are most useful when you’ve already discovered connections between specific enslaved people and an enslaver. When you know the name and location of an enslaver, search slave schedules with those details; the identities of enslaved people can be inferred by their ages and sexes.
Because indexes did not connect enslaved people by name with the enslaver, finding an enslaver’s name will likely take searching several different collections. Click here for help finding an enslaver’s name.
Interpreting slave schedules
When reading slave schedules, it helps to keep a few things in mind.
From the number of enslaved people associated with an enslaver, you can get a feel for whether your ancestor was one of a few people enslaved by a certain family or person or whether your ancestor was one of many people enslaved on a plantation. In 1860, about a third of White families in Confederate states owned people, and enslaved people lived and worked in settings from urban single family houses to large plantations.
In the pre-Civil War South, enslaved people were sometimes rented out to the highest bidders. Rental contracts often began on New Year’s Day and lasted a year, but start dates and durations varied. In the 1850s and early 1860s, about 5% of enslaved people were rented at any given time. In slave schedules, when a person was rented, the enslaver was listed as “owner,” and the person doing the renting was often listed under the "owner’s" name as the “employer.”
Some entries have a “guardian” listed beneath the name of the slave owner. This referred to the guardian of the enslaver, and was usually the parent of a slave-owning minor child.
If the state on a census page is unclear, search the internet for the listed county, then see which state the county was in. If the county on a census page is unclear, search the internet using the state and as close a spelling of the county as you can manage; this should help you figure out the county.