Welcome to Kentucky African American Griots!
This site is dedicated to assisting everyone who is researching African American ancestry in Kentucky by serving as a central repository for records of historical importance. Here you will find material such as emancipation orders, deeds, wills, family records, and more from across the state.
Our goal is to provide free genealogical data related to African Americans in Kentucky for all to share. Much of the material is organized by county and by special databases. Records that involve more than one county are grouped together on the Kentucky page.
If you have records to contribute, please contact us so they can be added here and made available to other researchers.
African American Research Resources, Guides and More
- African-American Genealogy: Putting Together the Pieces of Your Past – a five-part series with Traci L. Wilson-Kleekamp.
- Black Roots: A Beginner's Guide to Tracing the African American Family Tree (Ancestry.com).
- Center for African American Research.
- Building Blocks of African American Genealogy (Genealogy.com).
- African American Genealogy on the Web — Beginners Guide and How-tos (Princeton Public Library).
- African American Genealogy (Access Genealogy).
- African American Griots .
- Afrigeneas — African Ancestored Genealogy .
- Who are your people? (Christine's Genealogy Website).
- African-American section at Cindi's List .
- Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen's Bureau).
- African American Genealogy (Genealinks).
- Roll of Emigrants to Liberia, 1820–1843 .
- Sankofagen Wiki – data relating to plantations, farms, factories, manors, and other places that used enslaved African labor.
Kentucky and National Online Resources
- Civil War Slave Compensation Claims: 5th and 6th U.S. Colored Cavalry – includes names of enslaved men who served from several Kentucky counties, along with the names of their enslavers.
- Notable Kentucky African Americans Database .
- Kentucky Vital Records Project .
- KYGenWeb .
- Kentucky in the USGenWeb Archives .
- Kentucky Death Record Index, 1911–2000 .
- Kentucky Historical Society .
- Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives .
- Camp Nelson Union Army and Supply Depot .
- Kentucky — African American Message Board .
- Slaves in Kentucky Message Board .
- A History of Black Horsemen in the Twentieth Century .
- Sandi Gorin's Kentucky Research Board .
- Sandi Gorin's Kentucky Biography Board .
- Kentucky in the 1873 Cholera Epidemic .
- Sankofagen Wiki .
- The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database .
Griot: In early Africa, there were tribal members called griots (gree-oh) whose role was to pass on their community's history from one generation to the next. They were the storytellers of their time and helped preserve the genealogies and traditions of the tribe.
Today in America, many family historians, community storytellers, and researchers carry on that same work. To learn more about griots, click here.