Community Action
Reclaim the Records
Right now, there are auction houses selling bills of sale, freedom papers, and plantation ledgers. Documents with our ancestors' names on them. Treating them like collectibles. Profiting off the paperwork of our people's bondage.
Y'all don't have to outbid anybody. You need your eyes, a screenshot, and a few minutes. This page tells you where to look, what to look for, and how to get those records into our archive. Where they belong.
Let's be clear about what's happening here
These aren't just "historical artifacts." That bill of sale with a name, an age, and a price written next to it? That's somebody's great-great-grandmother. That plantation ledger is genealogical evidence that a family has been searching for. When a private collector buys it, it disappears. We lose access. They make money. And we're still out here trying to find our people with half the records missing. That's what this page is pushing back on.
Here's what y'all can do right now
You don't have to spend a dime. Just your time.
Find the listings
Go to any of the sites below and search the terms we listed. Check the "Historical Documents," "Americana," and "Civil War" categories too. You don't have to buy anything. Just look.
Screenshot everything you see
Right-click and save the images. Screenshot the full listing, front of the document, back if they show it, and the auction description. Get it as high resolution as you can. Once it sells, that listing might disappear.
Copy the URL before it's gone
Grab the full link to the listing and save it somewhere. Even after it sells, we can still find it. But we need that URL first.
Archive it at the Wayback Machine
Go to web.archive.org/save and drop that URL in. It saves a permanent snapshot of what was sold, what it looked like, how much it went for. Even if the auction house deletes the page, we've got a record.
Upload it to our archive
Go to "Share Document" in the Submit menu. You'll need a free account. Upload what you saved, note the document type, the time period, and any names you can make out. You're putting those names back where they belong. Somewhere our people can find them.
Tell somebody
Share it in genealogy groups. Tag @FormerLovePoet. Post it wherever y'all gather. The more eyes we have on these sites, the more we catch. We can't do this alone.
Where they're selling our records
Click any site to see exactly what to look for and what to search. We've done that part for y'all.
When you find something, here's what to look for
Names first
Bills of sale almost always list our ancestors by first name, age, and sometimes a physical description. Even a partial name. Even just "Eliza, age 30." That could be exactly what a family has been searching for. Write it down. Upload it. It matters.
Where and when
County, state, year. That's the combination that breaks brick walls. A family that's been stuck for years might have everything they need the moment they find out their ancestor was in Limestone County, Alabama in 1858. Capture every location detail you see.
Get the whole thing
Auction sites sometimes only show you a piece of the document. Zoom in. Scroll. Check if there's a back side shown. The information we need might be in the corner, at the bottom, or on the flip side. Don't leave anything behind.
These records belong to us. Full stop.
Nobody should be making money off the paperwork of our ancestors' bondage while we're still out here unable to find our own families. That's the reality. And every time we screenshot a listing, archive a page, upload a document, we're saying no to that. We're bringing those records home.
When y'all upload something to BEP's archive, it becomes searchable. It's free. It stays there. That's how we build something that actually lasts.