Dallas County Clerk Locates Legal Documents From the 1800s About Slavery

A Dallas County Clerk found legal documents from the mid-1800s that included the record of slaves in Dallas.

John Warren, a county clerk, had been searching for historical documents for roughly 5 years throughout his career. He recently found a property inventory list in a probate record dated centuries back.

Warren says as he began reading the documents, he felt as if he had went back in time. He was shocked by how surreal and acceptable slavery was.

Warren noted that when slaves’ owners would die, a judge would order them to be hired out to others.

Among the property inventories included details about slaves’ skin color.

“One yellow girl, Jane, who is $800. One Black girl, Scarlett, who is $500,” Warren read. “The difference between the Black and the yellow is the yellow is the offspring of the slave owner.”

The records that Warren found will be cleaned, preserved, digitized and placed on the county’s website.