Aurelia,

What you also see are many tenant farmers, especially former slaves, living on plantation land. There was a lot of turnover which complicates things.  Did the people you're looking for ever buy the land?  That's when you get into deed plotting -- a program like Deedmapper will help with that (I plotted by hand for 20 years -- trust me, Deedmapper is worth the money!) 

Here on our 1832 plantation we have encountered an interesting situation -- based on Slave Schedule data we know there were six slave cabins here.  While we have yet to excavate the area (my husband and I are professional archaeologists), we're pretty certain we know where the original "slave row" was located but there are no remains of cabins there.  However, we have located the remains of four cabins scattered across the property and based on 1870 census data, oral history, and other documentation we know former slaves were living in them.  Since it is very doubtful that the cabins were so dispersed during slavery, it appears they were moved after the war to allow the occupants their autonomy while they continued to work on the plantation for wages.  Many of the farms around us have similar "tenant" houses.  They have never had street addresses even though some of them were occupied as late as the 1980s.  Here in Charlotte County we did not have actual road names until 1998! so it can be very tricky :-)

As to maps, you didn't mention which county you're looking at but the Civil War era Gilmer maps are extremely helpful.  They don't exist for all the counties and the ones that do don't have the names of all the households but they can be very useful in conjunction with the search method I outlined. 

One caveat:  in the 1910 census for Charlotte County all the white families were ennumerated and then the black families on separate pages making it almost impossible to create a "map" of the area.  It is the only time and place I have encountered this.  I wonder if this is an anomaly or if other listers have found this in other counties?

Good luck!
Kathy



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