Unsung Heroes Award - Individual - Stacy Ashmore Cole

Dateline: 
Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree
Burbank, CA
June 1, 2019

The Genealogy Guys Podcast and Vivid-Pix have today given Stacy Ashmore Cole the Unsung Heroes Award for an Individual for the second quarter of 2019.

Stacy Ashmore Cole
Unsung Heroes Award Winner

The pre-Emancipation records of African-Americans in Liberty County, Georgia, are online at FamilySearch.org, but they are not indexed and online summaries normally omit their names. Stacy Ashmore Cole created TheyHadNames.net at  https://theyhadnames.net/ to remedy that gap. So far, more than 4,500 African-American names have been transcribed and added to a searchable database of wills, estate inventories, bills of sale, and other documents. From the pre-Emancipation probate and deed/mortgage records of the Liberty County courts digitized by FamilySearch, TheyHadNames.net now has:

• transcripts or summaries of 160 wills with more than 1,220 names of enslaved people;
• more than 200 estate inventories with more than 1,900 names'
• 30 deeds with more than 300 names; 
• 1,151 names of African-American church-goers in 1846;
• and more.

Individuals with African-American ancestry in Liberty County may now use the information in this site to trace their families back before the U.S. Civil War. Researchers and historians may also use it to shed light on the experiences of these people.

Stacey Ashmore Cole exemplifies the great qualities of a volunteer who sees something that needs to be done and does it. 

We Sing Your Praises!

Will of Benjamin B. King, one example of an original document
transcribed into TheyHadNames.net. 

Estate Inventory of Ann S. Chambers, Liberty County, Georgia
(Click to enlarge.)

Part of the page for Midway Church Records with links
to the original images at FamilySearch.org and transcriptions
at TheyHadNames.net site.
(Click to enlarge.)