Why did counties decide to collect these runaway records?

The short answer is enslaved people were legally considered property and the Virginia state government helped enslavers retain their investment on enslaved human beings by documenting the financial loss on those who self-emancipated. A longer answer requires some explanation of the laws and legal processes that brought about such records. Some of the “Runaway Slaves Records” in Virginia Untold were created as a result of the 1862 Act of Assembly which stated that commissioners of the revenue for each Virginia locality was to ascertain “the number of all slaves that have escaped to the enemy during this war” and to make a list including the names of enslaved people, their enslavers, ages, sexes, and often times, value. The commissioner of the revenue list returned these lists for each locality to the Auditor of Public Accounts, a body that served essentially as the State Treasury. Other records in this collection include receipts and accounts from local governments detailing the expenses of jailing, confining, and feeding enslaved people who were imprisoned for self-liberating. If a self-liberator was captured, local officials were responsible for placing advertisements in the newspapers to locate their enslaver. If the enslaver could not be found, the self-liberator became the property of the state and local officials sold the individuals to a new enslaver, typically by auction. The jail costs were paid with this money, but any funds remaining from the sale local officials sent to the Auditor of Public Accounts, who placed the money in a trust known as the Literary Fund. The Virginia state government established the Literary Fund in 1811 and designated that the money be used to build schools and educate poor white children. The state of Virginia was deeply involved in the trafficking enslaved people.

How does LVA come into possession records like these?

As mandated by the Code of Virginia, all of the Commonwealth’s public records that have historical, legal, fiscal, or administrative value are to be preserved in the archives at The Library of Virginia and made accessible to the citizens of the Commonwealth and other researchers.  These public records are transferred to The Library of Virginia through a well-established records management program.  Records in the custody of state agencies are appraised by records analysts in the Records Analysis Services Branch, and those identified as having permanent value will be transferred to the archives on an approved records retention and disposition schedule. All records retention schedules must be approved by the LVA Records Oversight Committee.

Prior to the 1960s/1970s/1980s there were no retention schedules. We got what state agencies sent decided to send us.  I’m sure the library reached out to agencies, like the Auditor of Public Accounts, for their older records, but there wasn’t a formal process like we have now.  Unfortunately, many records were most likely destroyed. We didn’t formally have a state government archival section until the 1990s.

How should we interpret what appears to be gaps or missing data in these archives?

It’s difficult to know for sure why there are gaps in the records, but for collections like the “Runaway Slave Records” in Virginia Untold, it is most likely because some localities didn’t send their lists or information to the Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts (APA). While the law may have instructed localities to create these lists, some localities never created them or sent them to the APA. The Library received the APA records in 1913, most likely because the APA was moving offices and wanted to clear out their space. For other records, especially those created and retained at the local level, we have evidence that records burned in courthouse or other building fires or during the Civil War. Records have also been stolen and destroyed. Some records may have never existed. Local record keeping was inconsistent, and laws were enforced differently across time and locality. Clerks did not maintain record keeping policies until recent decades.

Why is it important to preserve these records physically and digitally?

When we first started digitizing records for Virginia Untold in 2013, our efforts were largely motivated by researchers who were seeking enslaved and free Black ancestors. We knew that thousands of names existed in these lesser-known-about-documents and digitizing them and making them keyword searchable would provide a new level of access for genealogical research. Researching enslaved people is very challenging for a variety of reasons. Enslaved people did not have the privilege or the power to record their own stories. For years, archivists did not collect, process, or properly describe records related to Black people. Identifying important documents related to Black history and digitizing them improves access to this material.

As we continued to digitize material for Virginia Untold, the records revealed fuller narratives of the lives of enslaved and free people, not simply names. We found that these narratives were not discussed in the classroom or well addressed at the scholarly level. These lessons are exemplified in the process of digitizing the “Runaway Slave Records”; we learned more about the state government’s role in trafficking enslaved people. Another example might be the combined insight provided by the “Runaway Slave Records” and the “Commonwealth Causes” or criminal records in Virginia Untold. These records describe networks of white, free Black, and enslaved people working together as a part of the Underground Railroad to resist slavery and self-emancipate. The records in Virginia Untold complicate our understanding of a black and white historical narrative. We believe that digitization is currently one of our most powerful tools for telling a more complete story of our shared past.

Can you describe the process of digitizing these records?

An invaluable part of digitization is indexing important keywords from each record, a process that also helps us create descriptive metadata for each item we digitize. Before we scan the record, we create a spreadsheet of data for each record type in each locality. The archivist that processes the collection and our Digital Initiative staff work together to decide which important keywords or data fields are necessary to extract from the text of the record. We consider searchability and the needs of our users during this exercise so terms such as names of enslaved people, enslavers, locations, and dates are very important to index. Once complete, we make these data spreadsheets available to the public via the Virginia Open Data Portal. The datasets are freely available to access and download for projects, research, and other types of work.

Most of our Virginia Untold records have been scanned in-house at the Library of Virginia on Epson flatbed scanners or on copy stands with digital cameras in our digitization lab. A small percentage have been scanned by our digitization vendors outside of the Library. Most of the “Runaway Slave Records” were scanned on an Epson scanner by state records archivist, Renee Savits.

What other types of documents and items are in the Virginia Untold collection?

There are many types of records in Virginia Untold that illustrate Virginia’s efforts to control and police its Black population. For example, in 1806, Virginia required recently emancipated men and women to leave the state within 12 months of being freed. Virginia also enacted a law in 1793 and 1803 that required free Black and Multiracial people to register with their local court. Individuals who were found without registration or breaking the 1806 law were jailed. We’ve digitized over 4,000 of these loose registration papers that free people were required to carry. “Free Negro Tax” records list pages upon pages of free Black people who could not pay the heavy tax levied against them. Despite the legal quagmire evidenced by these records, the documents also reveal how enslaved and free Black people worked within and leveraged Virginia’s legal system to their advantage. A record type referred to as a “Freedom Suit” demonstrates that Black people understood the laws and their rights; they sought out legal counsel and enacted lawsuits against enslavers for holding them in bondage when they knew they should be free. Many times, they won those cases. Others used the process of petitioning state and local government to obtain permission to remain in the state of Virginia with their free status. These petitions are called “Petitions to Remain in the Commonwealth” and we’ve digitized nearly 400 of them. Even with very little choice in the matter, free Black mothers used strategy and relationship to apprentice their children to white people to learn trades and skillsets. These apprenticeship scenarios are documented in “Indentures of Apprenticeship.” Stories of resistance abound in our topical based collections. For example, we’ve digitized documents related to the rebellion led by enslaved man Gabriel in Richmond in 1800 and the 1831 Southampton insurrection led by Nat Turner.