Record Donations

The IAAM's Center for Family History actively seeks copies of privately held African American related genealogical and historical records and resources. The public can donate the following kinds of records:

• Family Bible Records
  • High resolution Adobe .pdf format or .jpg images (minimum 300 dpi)
  • Requires compelting our online  Deed of Gift Form below
     
• Family Photographs + Old Black Community & Businesses Photographs (pre-1970s)
  • High resolution .jpg images (minimum 300 dpi)
  • Requires compelting our online  Deed of Gift Form below
     
• Enslavement / Plantation Records
  • Our preference is for slavery-related documents that are not already freely available online
  • Examples: Plantation Journals/ Day Books, Plantation ledgers, enslaved hiring-out deeds, slave sales deeds, enslavers' deeds of partitions, enslavers' dettlement deeds, slave mortgage or insurance documents, slave ship manifests, slave auction sales ledgers, slave traders' records (slave purchase and auction records), slave jail records, enslaved sailors' records, etc.  
     
• Funeral Programs
  • High resolution .jpg images (minimum 300 dpi)
  • Requires compelting our online  Deed of Gift Form below
     
• United States Colored Troop Pension Application files (high resolution .jpg images (minimum 300 dpi or high resolution Adobe .pdf file)

Potential donors may contact the CFH archive team at cfh@iaamuseum.org.

Formating and naming your file(s):

PDF uploads:

Please upload a well-formatted pdf of hi-res images (e.g. family bible records, USCT pension applications, plantation journals, slave lists, etc  300-600ppi is recommended. Please be sure the dimensions, resolution and compression settings in the pdf are all correct.

Image uploads:

You can upload images individually or in a compressed zip or tar file. 

• Use only jpg, jpeg, or jp2 files. 
• Name your files sequentially. It is best to use the identifier in the name.

For example:

1st imgae in a sequence of images: 000YourName-filename.jpg 
2nd image in a sequence of images:001YourName-filename.jpg  
3rd image in a sequence of images: 002YourName-filename.jpg 
and so on

Uploading a Zip of Tar file

You can create a zip or .tar folder of the files and name that zip file using the page identifier e.g. YourName-yourfilename_images.zip. 

If possible use a file or folder compression tool that does not add extra extraneous files. Sometimes the compression tool that comes with your computer does this (as with the Mac tool for example.) Terminal or Cygwin work well.

[Add link to Deed of Gift form]