Bibb Superior Court Clerk Releases Slave Records in new Online Portal
Bibb County Superior Court Clerk, Erica L. Woodford, Esq. is pleased to announce the launch of the online platform for the Enslaved People Project.
Citizens of Macon-Bibb County, the State of Georgia, and the entire country can now access records from Bibb County Georgia containing over 1000 deeds and other court records involving the sale of enslaved Africans and African Americans. These records are contained in the official deed books of the Clerk’s Office. Macon, Georgia was a major hub in the Southern slave trade during the antebellum period, and this site offers a unique opportunity to both search and view primary source documents regarding slavery. Researchers, historians, educators, and genealogists will be able to use this site to locate ancestors. Clerk Erica L. Woodford states, “The Enslaved People Project has been an ongoing labor of love for the past decade. I am so excited that we are now able to share these official court/property records with the community at large. As the first African American Superior Court Clerk in Bibb County, I am both honored and humbled to unearth these records of our rich shared history.” Through this extensive digitization project the public now has access to data and images anytime from any location – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
This is a living platform that currently has close to 400 of the 1,000 documents indexed and available for search. Remaining documents are being indexed and uploaded to the platform weekly. Woodford states, “I find peace in knowing our treasure trove of records are now digitized, preserved, and stored electronically in case of disaster.”
The public can search Bibb County’s records of the Enslaved People Project at: https://recordhub.cottsystems.com/BibbGA/Search/Records
About the Enslaved People Project
The project began by accident. In 2013 Superior Court Clerk Erica L. Woodford discovered records of slave transactions in old Bibb County deed books while conducting a routine inventory. The 17 volumes, containing 6,000 pages of hand-written records, are in the mezzanine level of records storage in the Superior Court Clerk’s Office in the Bibb County Courthouse. A Mercer alum, Woodford contacted Mercer University Professor Dr. Chester Fontenot, Jr., and a partnership between the Superior Court Clerk’s Office and Mercer University was soon formed. The collaboration between the Clerk’s Office, Mercer Department of Africana Studies and Mercer Library Services resulted in grant funding being obtained to hire and train Mercer students who catalogued close to 1000 deeds involving enslaved people in Macon and Bibb County between the years of 1823 and 1865. Clerk Woodford, Chief Deputy Clerk Stephanie Woods Miller, and Dr. Fontenot, also known as the Dream Team, have engaged in several speaking engagements regarding this project, its methodology, and collaboration between the Clerk’s Office and the University. Preservation Clerk Julie Grimm has also been instrumental in the Enslaved People Project.
Subsequent to cataloguing the deeds, the Clerk’s Office acquired funding to hire its land records vendor, Cott Systems, to digitize the records. Further, a selection of records was on exhibit at the Tubman Museum, The Douglass Theater, and The Canopy Gallery, all in Macon, Georgia.
About Cott Systems
Cott Systems empowers local government offices to improve efficiency, provide superior constituent service, and preserve the official records entrusted to their care. Decades of dedication make it possible for Cott Systems to provide all the services a local official needs to preserve and modernize the rich history of their jurisdiction. In addition to industry-leading software solutions, Cott Systems also offers traditional data and imaging services: redaction, backfile document conversion, storage, scanning, reindexing, and microfilm. For more information about Cott Systems, please visit cottsystems.com.
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Press Inquiries:
Erica L. Woodford
Clerk of Superior Court of Bibb County, Georgia
478-621-6512 desk
478-954-4481 cell
ewoodford@maconbibb.us
