This is a page from the James City County Tax Account Book. Carter's Grove plantation lies within James City County. In the 1700s, the county government kept records of taxable property in the county. Since slaves were considered property, these records include some information about them, along with horses, cattle, and other property.

What can you discover about Carter's slaves from this Tax Account Book. Their names? Whether they were adults or children? The name of their owner? Move your mouse over the page to see what you can learn—or examine an enlargement of the page (opens in pop-up window).

This might seem like very little information, but it's more than we usually find. And yet we still do not know the slaves' full names, so we can't use this document to trace a family history. We can't learn who their parents were, nor where they might have come from. It's virtually impossible to trace a family history as we think of it. The best that most slavery researchers can do is to study the history of groups-for example, the group of slaves that lived at Carter's Grove. Their individual histories are lost in time.

Select another document to try to trace the slave trade back to Africa.