Weighing Data’s Ethics and Practicalities

Instructions

Suppose you are building a database to hold information from thousands of records like the one pictured and transcribed below.

  1. Identify the intended user of your database. Is it just you? The general public? Professional scholars? Descendants of enslaved ancestors?

  2. With your answer to the first question in mind, design your database here. Assume that you’re interested in everything each document can tell you. In other words, create a variable for every single bit of information that you can. (Note: This does NOT mean you need to transcribe the record into your database.)

Be prepared to explain your choice of variables as well as the specific language of their names.

Sale

Austin Woolfolk

to

Alexander Gordon

25 February 1825

Be it known that this day before me William Boswell a Notary public in and for the city of New Orleans duly commissioned and sworn personally came and appeared Austin Woolfolk of Augusta in the State of Georgia, who declared that for and in consideration of the sum of three hundred and fifty dollars to him in hand paid in the presence of the undersigned Notary and witness the receipt whereof he hereby acknowledges renouncing the exception of the law non numerated pecuniae and all others relative thereto, he does by these presents grant bargain and sell unto Alexander Gordon of this City merchant here present and accepting his heirs and assigns a negro man slave named Peter, aged about thirty five years, free from all incumbrances as appears from the certificate of the conservator of mortgages in this city dated, and not warranted against the vices and maladies prescribed by law:

To have and to hold the said slave, to the said purchaser his heirs and assigns shall and will warrant and forever defend against the lawful claims of all persons whomsoever by these presents.

Done and passed at New Orleans in the presence of George Pollock and Benoit  Pignon, witnesses who have signed their names with the parties and me Notary, this twenty fifth day of February eighteen hundred and twenty five.

Austin Woolfolk

George Pollock

Bt Pignon

William Boswell