Merry Christmas to everyone.    I have a question about manumission
records, the granting of freedom to slaves.    Of my many Virginia lines, I
am starting to arrive at a theory that one of my puzzling lines if due to
my ancestor being an illegitimate son of a slave owner and a slave and may
have been freed by his father, lived with his father, and took his father's
last name, but without any legal papers being left acknowledging him as a
son.

I am now starting to think this may have happened and he moved to Kentucky
and passed as white from then on.     I am reminded that one of Sally
Hemmings slave children, reputed to be Fathered by either Thomas Jefferson
or a Jefferson family member was freed by Thomas Jefferson in his will,
moved to Wisc and lived his life as a white person.    I think a fairly
great number of mixed race people moved west in the pioneer days of the
later 1700's and early 1800's and simply became white.   First moving to KY
and then up north to Indiana, Illinois and Ohio and beyond.

So, my question.     Can anyone explain or point me to where I can find out
what the manumission process in Virginia was in the late 1700's-early
1800's and what and where records may exist documenting freeing of slaves?

Thanks for your help.

Thanks,   Rich Fulton, [log in to unmask]
Americas zSeries SW Sales Representative for Business Partners, SWG
IBM, home office
2409 Columbia Drive
Flower Mound, TX. 75022  USA
Phone: 972-724-4794, t/l 450-8996
mobile:  469-360-3875

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