Due to numerous requests, it has been decided to prioritise the upload of a bare minimum of information for every Irish slaveholder/trader/overseer known to the project. In this way every person researching in South Carolina will have a starting point for their research. Once this is completed, we hope to return to a more in-depth search for the people enslaved by individual slaveholders.
If you use information found here please acknowledge the source of your research as follows
www.enslavement-to-citizenship.com/#/
Martine Brennan, Ireland
...and thank you.
Sept. 2023
If you use information found here please acknowledge the source of your research as follows
www.enslavement-to-citizenship.com/#/
Martine Brennan, Ireland
...and thank you.
Sept. 2023
This map is 'live'. Please 'click' on any of the tags for further information. Green tags indicate an Irish-born slaveholder with a known place of birth. Blue tags indicate an Irish-born slaveholder with a place of birth which is unknown or unclear at this time.
Data compiled by Martine Brennan M.A., Ireland: from Wills, Probate Records, U.S. Federal Census Returns, Fugitive Advertisements, Private Letters, Scholarly articles, books and blogs. |
Search for an enslaved person or a slaveholder by name here or click the tags on the map.
Our African American cousins
irishdiasporahistory.wordpress.com/2021/06/06/cousins-african-american-irish-and-dna-insights/ 'From Ireland to South Carolina: Irish migrant slaveholders' History Studies Journal, University of Limerick, Vol. 22 (2021) pp132-147. |
Irish-born in South Carolina (by county) 1850 Abbeville 242 Anderson 57 Barnwell 31 Beaufort 38 Charleston 2,577 Chester 215 Chesterfield 12 Colleton 15 Darlington 7 Edgefield 103 Fairfield 262 Georgetown 5 Greenville 65 Hampton 0 Horry 2 Kershaw 15 Lancaster 23 Laurens 47 Lexington 4 Marion 0 Marleboro 2 Newberry 30 Orangeburg 13 Pickens 18 Richland 216 Spartanburg 44 Sumter 40 Union 77 Williamsburg 1 York 143 Source: 1850 U.S. Federal Census, Irish-born, South Carolina. Family Search (2020) (https://bit.ly/31jIkGs) (accessed 23 March 2020). Table created by Martine Brennan. |
African Americans in Irish slaveholder records
1670-1865 As African American families research their family trees, they have identified Irish names in their families, Irish names among those who enslaved their families and even Irish genetic ancestry when they undergo DNA testing. Equally, Irish people have begun to identify African American cousins. This points to a large unexplored history. Enslavement to citizenship is a public history project which seeks to identify Irish slaveholders and overseers in the U.S.A. but more importantly to find the names of African American families hidden in their records prior to 1865. The legacy of slavery is long. This project is one of many attempting to reunite families. African Americans in Irish slaveholder records blog www.enslavement-to-citizenship.com/african-americans-in-irish-slaveholder-records-blog Not every Irish man and woman who found their way to North America before 1862 became a slaveholder. However a number of their children did. A second blog has been added to give information about Irish descendant slaveholders. Irish descendant slaveholders www.enslavement-to-citizenship.com/irish-descendant-slaveholders |
Irish-Born by State in the South 1850 Alabama ~3,746 Arkansas ~513 Delaware ~3,474 Florida ~873 Georgia ~3,869 Kentucky ~9,746 Louisiana ~25,152 Maryland ~19,456 Mississippi ~2,017 Missouri ~32,645 North Carolina ~619 South Carolina ~4,223 Tennessee ~2,724 Texas ~1,388 Virginia ~12,017 Source: 1850 U.S. Federal Census, Irish-born, Name of State. Family Search (2020 (www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1401638) (accessed 8 Feb 2021). Table created by Martine Brennan. ![]() |
Did you know that as many as 3,000 African people lived in Ireland in the 1700s? Fragments of their lives have been uncovered in historical documents.
www.enslavement-to-citizenship.com/african-people-in-ireland-1600-1900
www.enslavement-to-citizenship.com/african-people-in-ireland-1600-1900

Enslavement to citizenship: African Americans in Irish Slaveholder records by Martine Brennan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.