Clemson University professors preserving deeds listing enslaved people as property

PICKENS COUNTY, S.C. (WSPA) — Professors and researchers at Clemson University are digitally preserving documents that listed the names of enslaved people in Pickens County.

The work is being led by Professors Susanna Ashton and J. Brent Morris as well as R.M. Cooper Library Head of Digital Strategies Christopher Vinson and Pickens County Register of Deeds department head Paul McGuffin.

The team is combing through Pickens County’s property deeds that date back to the 18th and 19th centuries to identify each enslaved person who was listed as property.

“It’s alarming when you first start to see names of people alongside deeds that are mainly transfers of property,” Brent Morris, a Professor of History, said.

“We said we need to bring these stories out for the descendants and for the community,” Susanna Ashton, Professor of English, added,

The process will not be easy. Each document is handwritten. Researchers believe they could find hundreds of names of enslaved people on the pages.

“We’re going to have teams of student workers, faculty workers and staff workers to look through these to tag which ones have families in them or have individuals listed in them to try to see them and mark them,” Ashton explained. “Who are they? Do they have an age? Do they have a profession?”

The team will also digitally preserve the centuries-old documents. They plan to take high-resolution images of each page and then create an online database with all the names they uncover.

“Our goal is to build a database for people to find out more about their ancestors or other people that they’re researching in the 19th century, but do it in a way that’s much more accessible,” Morris said.

It will be a tedious process but one the team hopes will shine a light on people whose names have been lost in history.

“Each of these stories matters,” Ashton said. “As a South Carolinian, I want to share those stories.”

Ashton and Morris said they hope to complete this project by the end of the year. They hope to then expand the project throughout the state and digitally preserve documents in every county in South Carolina.

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