In 1804, the Ohio General Assembly enacted the Ohio Black Codes to govern black and mulatto people living in the state. Under these Codes, free blacks and mulattos were required to register at their local court, proving they were free by providing emancipation papers or witnesses who could prove their “free” status and guarantee their good behavior with a monetary surety.
We are excited to share that one such register, for Miami County, Ohio, in 1834, is now freely available online, anytime, through the Wright State University Campus Online Repository, at CORE Scholar: Manumission Records of Black Persons (Miami County, 1834).
In 2017, we were glad to share the original volume with the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, Ohio, to be featured in their exhibit, Freed Will: The Randolph Freedpeople From Slavery to Settlement.
You can see a name index for this volume by visiting our Emancipation Index for Miami County. The index also includes information for Greene, Montgomery, and Logan County, Ohio.
As a member of the Ohio Network of American History Research Centers, Special Collections and Archives at WSU holds local government records of eleven counties in west central Ohio.
This digital project has been a collaborative effort between the University Libraries’ Special Collections & Archives and the University Libraries’ Digital Initiatives and Repository Services (DIRS) Department, which provided the digitization, metadata encoding, and uploading of digital content to CORE Scholar.
Please visit the Special Collections & Archives’ CORE Scholar page to browse additional digital collections. Don’t forget to check out the University Archives’ CORE Scholar page as well.