A digital humanities project documenting the lives of people of African descent enslaved in New York and New Jersey by the Van Kouwenhoven-Conover family.
Project website: cowenhoven.org Project lead: Christopher Barnes (@cbarnesphd)
For each named individual identified in an archival document or public record, the Cowenhoven Project creates a profile on WikiTree, a free genealogical website, where they can be found by their descendants. The project’s website tells their stories and promotes the many initiatives commemorating the lives and contributions of people enslaved in the North.
The project spans multiple platforms:
| Asset | Live URL | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Infographic | data.cowenhoven.org/infographic/ | Project-overview infographic — 247 documented individuals across NY and NJ, 1736–1840 |
More visualizations and downloadable data assets will be added over time.
The project draws on primary documentation including, but not limited to:
A complete bibliography is maintained in the project’s public Zotero library.
Barnes, Christopher A. The Cowenhoven Project: Recovering Black Lives from Enslaver Archives in New York and New Jersey. https://cowenhoven.org
Narrative content, infographics, and data summaries published in this repository are released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) unless otherwise noted.
Primary source documents themselves are in the public domain or held by their respective archives; consult each source for its applicable terms.
Researchers, descendants, and collaborators are welcome to flag corrections, propose additions, or share related materials via the repository’s Issues tab.