Using North Carolina Cohabitation Records to research your African American ancestors
Channel: statelibrarync
Date: 2017-02-02

Cohabitation records are often overlooked resources in African American genealogical research. You might ask what is a cohabitation record?  Simply put, it was not legal for slaves to be married until after emancipation. In order to recognize their unions during slavery as legal, former slaves in North Carolina were required to register their “cohabitation” in the county in which they lived.