Wyoming County, West Virginia People of Color, 1860 & 1870

Wyoming County, West Virginia People of Color, 1860 & 1870

West Virginia; African Americans--Appalachian Region; African Americans--Southern States; African American heritage; African American slavery--Wyoming County; Slave Owners--Wyoming County; African American free people of color; African American families.

The following lists have been compiled in order to provide free and easy access to data regarding the population of people of color in Wyoming County, West Virginia in the years 1860 and 1870. Although Appalachia has long been considered a (nearly) exclusively white space in popular American imagination, just the opposite was, and is, true. Slavery was abolished in the United States in 1865, months following the close of the Civil War. Therefore, we have chosen to compile lists of Wyoming County’s population of color from the census published before and after 1865. Additionally, we have included a list of slaveholders from 1860, as well as the numbers of slaves these individuals claimed on slave schedules.
*The state of West Virginia was formed out of Virginia in 1863. Wyoming County was created out of Logan County in 1850.

Black in Appalachia

United States Census Bureau

Black in Appalachia

1860 - 1870

Misha Awad & Kathleen Kelley

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