Vintage

The 1848-49 Boston City Directory was the last to discriminate between blacks and whites. There is a separate list entitled "People of Color". This proved to be useful for the purposes of our research, and provided a foundation from which to build our database. This information was later integrated with data from the United States Census of 1850. More information about this database, along with access, is available on this website. These are the original page images from the 1848-49 directory. 

These records from the Boston City Archives show residents labeled "colored" from Wards 2, 4, 5 and 6 from the year 1850. The records were digitized by Ryan Morse, BHS class of 2004.

In 1764, Governor William Shirley had ordered that an enumeration of all slaves, both male and female, over the age of sixteen be completed by each town. This included Maine since it was still part of Massachusetts.