Krio GriotNAMED, NOT COUNTED
Names I hold
I hold what survived of your line. I will say each name, and tell you every hand it passed through to reach you.
Elias Perrin
FREEDMEN'S BUREAU LABOR CONTRACT · 1867
Charlotte Dixon
MANUMISSION DEED · CHARLESTON, 1863
Mariama
SPOKEN BY HER GRANDDAUGHTER · NO PAPER SURVIVES
Name not recorded
SLAVE SCHEDULE · 1860
WHO CARRIED THIS NAME TO YOU
100+
PLACES I LOOK
4
RECORD SYSTEMS, LINKED
1870
THE BREAK, CROSSED
7
WAYS OF KNOWING
The hardest problem in American genealogy
In 1870 the federal census named formerly enslaved people as free individuals for the first time. Before that year, most tools go quiet. These are the record sets that name your people through the break — and where they name no one, I say so.
Enslaved people were counted and not named. Standard platforms have no path forward from here.
Five record sets that do name them. I search, extract, and organize all five — and grade what each one can actually prove.
1865 – 1872
Labor contracts, marriage registers, apprenticeship records, ration rolls, and medical logs from the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Often the earliest paper anywhere to hold an ancestor's full name, family structure, and location.
1850 & 1860 CENSUS
These name no one. I read age, sex, and physical description against known slaveholders, neighbouring plantations, and post-war Bureau papers to bridge the anonymity — and every crossing is marked as reasoning, never as fact.
1780s – 1865
Court registries, deeds of freedom, and physical description records for free people of colour before emancipation. These often carry family relationships, ages, and the name of whoever granted freedom — a direct link into slaveholder records.
1865 – 1874
The richest paper of the era. One depositor entry can list immediate family by name, military regiment, birthplace, former enslaver, and current address — a single record can open an entire branch.
1865 – 1900
Placed in Black newspapers by freedpeople searching for family separated during slavery. Each one names individuals, former slaveholders, and last known locations — the closest thing we have to a migration and separation tracker, written by the people it happened to.
Seven ways of knowing
A griot who guesses is not a griot. Every name I give you carries the mark of how it reached me — held in a record, reasoned from evidence, spoken by kin, disputed between sources, carried across a gap where no paper survived, or missing entirely. I will not fill a silence to make you feel better.
What I do when you ask
I work three ways at once — searching, reading, and drawing the line. Each one feeds the others, so nothing you find has to be typed twice.
01 · I SEARCH
Give me a name and what little you know. I look through over a hundred collections at once — Bureau papers, census archives, USCT rolls, newspapers, state repositories — and I write down every place I looked and whether it answered. The log is kept whether I find someone or not.
02 · I READ
Bring me a scan, a photograph, a letter, a deed. I read the hand, pull the names, dates, and places, and file them to archival standard without you typing a word. A box of loose paper becomes a collection you can search.
03 · I DRAW THE LINE
Bring your GEDCOM from anywhere and the whole line loads at once — every person, every connection, every date. Move through it, search it, open anyone to edit without leaving the view. Where a parent is missing, connect them and the branch redraws.
Four databases sit underneath all of it. Every table is editable in the cell — filter, sort, bulk-select — and every record is linked to every other.
ONE ROW PER PERSON
The central directory for everyone in your tree — names and spellings, life status, birth and death, family connections, and DNA matches with shared cMs.
ONE ROW PER LIFE EVENT
Each moment gets its own row — a birth, a land deed, an enlistment, an emancipation filing, a marriage. Rows stack chronologically with a citation on every one.
CONTINUOUS AUDIT TRAIL
A permanent record of every search — which databases, which keywords, what date, and the result: found, not found, or inconclusive. Negative results are kept, not discarded.
SCANNED FILES + EXTRACTED METADATA
Where your uploads live as archival records — the original file, the text read from it, the metadata filed to standard, and links to every ancestor the document names.
Plans
Every account begins as a free workspace. Build your tree, enter what you have, and see what the research engine does before you pay anything.
STARTER
The digital replacement for paper worksheets. Build your tree, enter records by hand, and see firsthand what the engine can do.
WHAT YOU GET
NOT INCLUDED
ACTIVE RESEARCHER · MOST CHOSEN
Automates the paperwork and organizes the research process. Built for one family historian working a specific lineage.
EVERYTHING IN FREE, PLUS
No contracts · cancel anytime
POWER RESEARCHER & ARCHIVIST
Deep analysis, unlimited bulk processing, and public exhibits — for professional genealogists and large family collections.
EVERYTHING IN BASIC, PLUS
No contracts · cancel anytime
FULL COMPARISON
| Feature | Free$0 | Basic$25/MO | Upgrade$49/MO |
|---|---|---|---|
| RESEARCH TOOLS | |||
| Pedigree chart and DNA tree | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Relationship calculator | |||
| Search databases | 5–10 public | 50+ core | 100+ complete |
| Automated research log | Manual entry | Fully automated | Analytics and variants |
| ARCHIVE SCANNER | |||
| Metadata scans | 3–5 lifetime | 100 per month | Unlimited |
| Bulk PDF and ZIP upload | — | — | |
| EXHIBITS AND COLLECTIONS | |||
| Digital exhibits | View only | Create private | Public and private |
| STORAGE | |||
| Cloud storage | 250–500 MB | 5 GB | 100 GB – 1 TB |
What can’t you answer about your family?
That is where this starts. That is where it always starts. Tell me the question and I will show you where the answer might be kept.