Celia Gaines

When it comes to data, how can Kinfolkology respect the claims of kinfolk?

[This is an edited excerpt of Dr. Jennie K. Williams's forthcoming book, Oceans of Kinfolk: the Coastwise Traffic of Enslaved Persons to New Orleans, 1820-1860. Please do not cite or circulate without permission.]
On October 15, 1836, the Alexandria, VA-based slave traders John Armfield and Isaac Franklin sent 111 men, women, and children to New Orleans aboard their brig, the Uncas, which had been specially outfitted for the business of human trafficking. Listed as #84 on the manifest of that voyage was a man named Moses Gaines, described as 24 years of age and a little over 5’8” in stature.
The Uncas’s next voyage from Alexandria to New Orleans began a little more than a month later, on November 19, 1836. Listed thirty-ninth on the manifest of this voyage was a twenty-six-year-old woman named Celia Ganes. Customs officials had recorded her last name slightly differently than Moses’s, but make no mistake: Celia was Moses Gaines’s sister.
Decades passed, and eventually, at last, slavery ended. As soon as they were able, hundreds of formerly enslaved people set out looking for the loved ones from whom they had been stolen, sold, or sent away during slavery. Newspapers across the country printed advertisements taken out by African Americans searching for family. One such post, published in 1880 in a New Orleans paper called the Southwestern Christian Advocate, read as follows:
DEAR EDITOR–I wish to inquire about my people. I left them in a trader’s yard in Alexandria, with a Mr. Franklin. They were to be sent to New Orleans. Their names were Jarvis, Moses, George and Maria Gains. Any information of them will be thankfully received. Address me at Aberdeen, Miss.
And just below, appeared the name of the post’s author: Celia Rhodes, or–as she was formerly known–Celia Gaines.

1. In a perfect world, we would be able to ask enslaved people for their consent before adding their name to a database like Oceans of Kinfolk or Louisiana Kindred, or–at the very least–we’d be able to ask enslaved people’s descendants their blessing on behalf of their ancestors.
  In reality, however, asking Descendants’ permission to include the names of enslaved ancestors in a database would be an incredibly complicated task for several reasons. To begin, most of the individuals in Oceans of Kinfolk and Louisiana Kindred have many, many descendants. Who should get to decide? And how?
  Besides, many people use databases like Oceans of Kinfolk and Louisiana Kindred the to do the same thing Celia Gaines Rhodes used the newspaper to do: find family. So, how can we ask descendants’ consent to include their ancestors in a database if many people use that very database to find out they are in fact Descendants and of whom?
  All of this is to say:
  What does consent mean in the context of data about enslaved persons?
2. Historical databases like Oceans of Kinfolk and Louisiana Kindred take many years to build. For that reason, some people argue that historical data should “belong” to whoever produces it. One of Kinfolkology’s foundational objectives, however, is to honor the fact that while enslaved ancestors are no longer living, they were (and remain) part of communities and families that are very much alive. For this reason, we hope to develop a new model of data stewardship: one that recognizes historians’ hard work, yes, but one that also recognizes and respects Descendants’ claims to that same data. We want, in other words, to honor the claims of kinfolk.
  How do we do this?