I am thrilled to see the Henry County register go online in this form,
since I made extensive use of a transcription done in the 1970s when the
original was nowhere to be found. It later turned up on a shelf in the
county clerk's office. (I told the story of this document in "The
Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White.") I was able to
reconstruct and extend some family trees by using the Cohabitation Register
side-by-side with the voluminous Hairston plantation records, the county
Death Record, and other sources. The blog post notes the overwhelming
presence of the surname "Hairston" in this record, and makes some comments
on what the register tells us about naming practices. The blog speculates
that: "The 24 [African-American] women named "America" in Henry County
would indicate a strong sense of national pride." It should be noted that
at least one of the white plantation mistresses was named America Hairston
and she may have been the point of origin for this name. On another point,
the blog says, "Taking the name of a former master may have also been a way
of maintaining extended family and community ties with former slaves from
the same plantation." I agree, and have long thought that some
African-American surnames derived from the owner's name could well have
been "place markers," a way of saying "we as a family come from the
African-American community that lived on a Hairston place." One of the very
interesting patterns to emerge in this register is the longevity of the
marriages among the enslaved people.



Henry Wiencek

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