The Story Behind the Platform
For Black and Creole families in Louisiana, 1865 represents more than emancipation — it represents a documentary wall. Before that year, enslaved individuals appear in notarial acts and church records, often recorded only by first name or family group. After it, they appear in census records under surnames they chose for themselves. The challenge of connecting those two worlds is the problem this platform was built to solve.
The 1865 Barrier
Standard genealogical databases treat pre- and post-emancipation records as separate worlds. This platform bridges them by linking individuals algorithmically across archives that were never designed to speak to each other — identifying probable matches by name, approximate birth year, and parish of residence, then presenting those matches transparently with confidence scores so researchers can evaluate the evidence themselves.
How It Works
Each archive is imported into a unified database. Linking tables connect records across archives using a scoring model that weighs name similarity (including phonetic matching for French, Spanish, and English spelling variants), year proximity by record type, and parish geography. Matches above the confidence threshold are surfaced on individual family profile pages alongside the underlying evidence.
What's Next
The platform continues to grow. Every record card and family profile page now includes a direct link to the Freedman's Bureau records on FamilySearch — the Bureau's labor contracts, ration rolls, and marriage registers document the same families during the precise years between the Hebert Archive's 1865 cutoff and the 1880 Census, filling the most critical gap in Louisiana Reconstruction-era family history.
Future additions include Bureau of Land Management land claims linking freedpeople to post-emancipation land ownership, and expanded census coverage for Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi — extending the cross-archive model beyond Louisiana.