Introduction to the Louisiana 16 Journey

Hello.

My name is Zann Nelson and I live in Virginia.  I am over the moon about this Blog and the publication of the names of those who were enslaved by the Taylors in Point Coupee Parish, Louisiana.  The opportunity to enrich this list with my research on these ancestors is very important to me and hopefully all the readers. Thank you to the Thom Family descendants for sharing!  I will be posting on a regular basis detailing the research that resulted from a project I initiated and have written about called the Louisiana 16.

To entice you a bit, please read this very brief introduction.  

I was the director of the Montpelier (James Madison's home) Descendants' Project, researching the lives of the enslaved and finding living descendants.  It was discovered that in 1834 Madison sold an estimated 16 enslaved people of color to his distant cousin William Taylor. They were relocated to his plantations in Louisiana. It is that discovery that launched a multi-year journey for me with remarkable findings. 

Stay tuned.

For the Descendants of the Enslaved People of Lakeland and Briars Plantations, Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana

 A Beginning

It has been a few decades since I visited an elderly cousin who showed me the journals passed down from his great-grandfather. I was fascinated. As I poured over the faded writing on the yellowed pages, I saw lists of names and realized they were names of slaves. I wanted to know who they were. What happened to them? What were their lives like?

Those questions stuck with me over the years. My elderly cousin passed away, but with the help of other cousins, we were finally able to digitize the journal pages.  During this second viewing I was astounded to find in the back of the journal an Account of Births - names of children, dates of birth, and their mothers' names. 

This information would be a goldmine of information for the descendants of these enslaved people.  So I made it my goal to transcribe the contents and share the transcription so the descendants could find the names of their ancestors. 

This blog is a work in progress. I plan to add more context with the help of others. But for now here are some details:

The transcription of Accounts of Births comes from a plantation journal kept by William Taylor for two plantations he owned in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana: Lakeland and Briars . The Accounts of Births cover children born during the years 1831-1862. The diary section of the journal covers the years 1849-1862. William Taylor died in 1850 and his wife Lucy Lewis Thom Taylor took over writing the journal.

Here is a link to the transcription: https://lakeland-briarsplantationrecords.blogspot.com/p/transcript-of-account-of-births-from.html

You can also click on the link under "Accounts of Births" in the right side bar to access the transcription.

I welcome your comments if you have information to add or questions. I may not be able to answer the questions right away, but they will provide some direction for future research.

Please feel free to share a link to this blog with others. 

This work by is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.