The task of writing the history and capturing the experiences of enslaved people is difficult, as sources for research are limited. In the early 1830s, several southern states, including Louisiana, enacted anti-literacy laws that forbade enslaved people to learn to read or write, so few personal papers exist. Nonetheless, more archival documentation on enslaved individuals exists than many people assume—however, these documents are often dispersed between archives in Africa, Europe, and the Americas, and listed under the name of the enslaver rather than the enslaved person. This database seeks to counter that dispersal by making accessible online the information we have on the individuals enslaved at the Hermann-Grima House. Following in the ground-breaking footsteps of historian Dr. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall in creating the Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy database, the intention of the Database of Enslaved Individuals at Hermann-Grima House is to take the archival documents on the roughly 70 people known to have been enslaved on the property and make them available to historians, genealogists, and the public.
The documents that are available—notarial acts, wills and inventories, conveyance, census, tax, succession, emancipation, sacramental and death records—give an accurate but sometimes impersonal view of the enslaved individuals they document. However, they can allow us to put together a timeline of important events in the life of an enslaved individual, trace family and genealogical relationships, and sometimes give insights into the occupations, personalities, and personal stories of the individuals enslaved at the house.
For example, we learn that in 1832 Henry was “about twenty-eight years, being in the habit of running away” or that in 1833 Eliza was “about seventeen years old, a laundress and a cook”. Records tell us that on May 9th, 1838, Sophie was emancipated by Marie Anne (Filiosa) Grima. Sophie was believed to be sixty-six at the time and had been within the Grima household for fifty years.
Occasionally, documents hint at a much larger story such as that of Maria who was around thirty-eight years old when she was accused of “being addicted to drunkenness and having absconded once.” Her son, James, was seventeen at the time and accused of having stolen sixteen dollars. Though Maria and James had been in the Hermann household for seventeen years, Samuel Hermann, Sr. required purchaser George Ann Botts to remove them at least 200 miles from New Orleans, with the condition that they would never be re-sold without the guarantee that they would remain outside of the city.
Hermann-Grima + Gallier Historic Houses marked its 50th anniversary in 2021. In March of that year a concerted effort was started to create a comprehensive database of all available information on the individuals enslaved at Hermann-Grima House between its construction in 1831 and the end of the Civil War. This information was used and expanded upon to support the development of the museum’s Urban Enslavement Tour, launched in October of that same year, and has now been compiled here and made available to the public.