Indiana’s Earliest Slave Register: Indiana Territory, Knox County, 1805-1807

This dataset documents enslaved individuals registered in the Knox County, Indiana circuit court between 1805 and 1807. It provides details such as names, ages, former residences, lengths of servitude, and the names of the enslavers who registered them. The Knox County Slave Register exists because of a legal loophole in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which officially banned slavery in the Northwest Territory, including what would become Indiana. Despite federal and state prohibitions, the Indiana legislature enacted a series of laws during the territorial period that allowed chattel servitude and other coercive labor practices to persist. The dataset exemplifies the potential of digital humanities to address longstanding silences surrounding enslaved and unfree African Americans in the Midwest, particularly those historically overlooked by scholars due to an overemphasis on the legal history of slavery.