The guide covers families in Virginia and the Carolinas who were free before the Civil War and weren’t counted as white. In the census from 1790 to 1810, they’re in the column for “all other free persons.” If you’ve got Goins, Chavis, Bunch, Driggers, or Cumbo in your tree, start here. My own Goins family is in these records.

It’s 9 pages:

• Page 1: What these families were, how the records labeled them, and how to use the guide

• Page 2: The oldest free families, going back to the 1600s

• Pages 3 to 6: Surnames sorted into the 14 communities where these families lived, from the Eastern Shore of Virginia to Robeson County and the South Carolina backcountry

• Page 7: The largest free families of color in the 1810 census for Virginia and North Carolina

• Page 8: How to read Paul Heinegg’s books, with notes on spelling changes, the census test, his numbering, and how to find the original record

• Page 9: A fillable family worksheet you can type into or print, one page per family

There are 242 clickable links in it. Click a surname in green and that family’s history opens on Heinegg’s site. The sources at the end are clickable too. The worksheet takes you through one family in the order I’d do it myself: the census, then Heinegg’s entry, then the original record he cited.

Every surname comes from Heinegg’s published family histories. His books are a secondary source, so a name on these pages is a lead. The original record is where you confirm it.