Why we are researching people who were enslaved alongside Hilliard

African American genealogy often requires reconstructing the full enslaved community, because parents, siblings, spouses, children and other relatives may appear only indirectly in estate, probate, tax and plantation records.

BEFORE TILL will therefore research people appearing in the same estate, people repeatedly transferred together, witnesses, neighbors, post-emancipation households, surname clusters, Freedmen's Bureau records, marriage records, church records and migration patterns.

This is research strategy. It is not proof of kinship. Nobody becomes Hilliard's relative in this archive because they were enslaved beside him.