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Choose
a letter to see the Black Loyalist surnames recovered during the
1998-'99 research project. They are all the surnames recorded in
the Book of Negroes in 1783, with some additions from the 1784 Nova
Scotian muster rolls.
Muster
roll names have an asterisk * after the name. (The muster rolls were
lists of people given provisions by the government.) In some cases,
but not in all, Black Loyalists used an owner's surname.
All names
appear alphabetically, written exactly as they appear in the Book
of Negroes and the muster rolls. Sometimes different families had similar-sounding
names but they were spelled differently in the records. Each one has been included:
O'NEAL O'NEIL O'NEILL
In some
instances, you will see names in brackets. These either correct a
mistake made in the Book of Negroes by a poor speller: RAGG [see WRAGG]
or they are other spellings of the individual's name as they appear
in later documents: REDDICK [variant: REDWICK, REDOCK, REDICK, RUDDOCK]
Some
people, mainly children, appear in the Book of Negroes without a surname
or an owner's name. Perhaps the surnames that are on the muster rolls
but aren't in the Book of Negroes are the names chosen by these people
upon arriving in Nova Scotia. An enslaved person's surname is not
often listed in the Book of Negroes. A name inside a bracket followed
by a question mark is a slave owner's name or an indenturer's name
(and sometimes both): [HOLMES?] In these instances, the slave owner's
name or the indenturer's name is a starting point when doing genealogical
research, since an individual may have chosen it as a surname.
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