The barriers to finding ancestors with ties to slavery continue to be pushed aside. The latest example of bringing enslaved ancestors out of the shadows can be found at the Lowcountry Africana website.

To quote from this data-rich site, it serves to “document the family and cultural heritage of African Americans in the historic rice-growing areas of South Carolina, Georgia and extreme northeastern Florida, an area that scholars and preservationists have identified as a distinct culture area, home to the rich Gullah/Geechee culture.”

True to its description, lowcountryafricana.net is “a treasure trove of primary documents, book excerpts and multimedia that further document and explore the dynamic cultural and family heritage of the Lowcountry Southeast.”

Access to the entire content of Lowcountry Africana is 100% free, and includes a searchable database of primary historical documents of interest to genealogists, historians and other scholars.

It’s inspiring to see such a website, which will hopefully encourage others like it.