The Wornall Majors House Museums in Jackson County, Missouri launched a free online database in February that turns 19th-century deeds, wills, probate records, and bills of sale into searchable names. Each entry comes with a plain-language summary, so you don’t need paleography skills or a courthouse parking pass to understand what you’re reading. The project started almost by accident, when staff researching Alexander Majors, who enslaved at least 23 people, kept finding those same people listed by name and age in county records.
For Reggie James, a 75-year-old retired schoolteacher, the tool represents something he never had. He spent nearly 50 years tracing his own lineage by hand, one document at a time, back to 1851 in Jackson County and beyond. Most Black families researching genealogy hit the same wall: enslavement erased names from official memory, and the records that survive are scattered, handwritten, and hard to search. A free, indexed database doesn’t fix that history, but it does give people a place to start.
The museum offers up to two hours of free research help and continues adding names, with funding support from Kansas City’s Monument Coalition. Closer to home, the Selby Public Library in Sarasota and local historical societies across Manatee, Sarasota, and Charlotte counties can help you begin your own search. Have you ever tried to trace your family history? What stopped you, and would a tool like this change that?
