Lost Lineages

Lost Lineages

Was your family free before 1865?

We open the old county books — court minutes, deeds, wills, tax lists, free registers — and find the free Black families of Virginia and the Carolinas, and the surnames that still carry them today.

158 surnames from 15 of our films, each linked to the minute its records are read.

Elias and Naomi Goins, the channel's two AI narrators, reading an old county record book together

The surnames in our films

Find your family's name and tap it: you will see the film and the minute where Elias and Naomi read its records — the county, the year and the document.

Not in our films yet

Put your surname, your county and your state in the comments under any of our films. We read every one, and many of our films begin with a viewer's question. Or write to us at hello@lostlineages.com.

A surname is not proof on its own. Free families and enslaved families carried the same names in the same counties. A name is a place to start looking: the county, the decade and the record are what tell you which family is yours.

Start with these films

Every film names its records in the description, so you can check them yourself.

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How we work

Real records

County court minutes, deeds, wills, tax lists, free registers, censuses and Revolutionary War pension files, and the published work of genealogists such as Paul Heinegg.

Sources you can check

Each film's description lists the records it reads, one per line, with the county and the year, so you can find the same page yourself.

Honest about the limits

A name can point you to a county, not to a person. Where the record says "probably", we say "probably". Where a county's books burned, we say so.

Our two narrators, Elias and Naomi Goins, are AI characters. The narration and most images are AI-generated reenactments. Every record we quote is real.

Write to us

Tell us your surname, your county and your state.

hello@lostlineages.com