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Help on searching

The Lascelles Slavery Archive can be searched via a number of criteria (outlined further below). Searches can make use of any one of these criteria, or combine them to obtain more specific results. For example, searching for:

  • the year '1800' will return 9 records;
  • the year '1800' and the keyword 'Letter' will return 7 records;
  • the year '1800', the keyword 'Letter' and the category 'London Commission Merchants: J. Nelson' will return 2 records.

The criteria available to search the archive are as follows:

Keyword
The keyword search allows a string of characters to be matched against the 'Description' field of any record. The keyword field does NOT allow boolean searching (ie. using the operators 'AND', 'OR', 'NOT', etc) - only exact character strings will be matched. Thus, a keyword search of 'Lord Harewood' will return records containing the string 'Lord Harewood', but NOT those containing 'Lord of Harewood'.

Date
This field will return records matching the specified date - either exactly or as part of a date range.

Record ID
Record ID is primarily for researchers who already know the Record IDs for the records they wish to find. Complete Record IDs do not have to be entered: entering 'Bdle 3' will return all records where the Record ID contains 'Bdle 3'.

Individuals, Estates/Plantations & General Papers
The categories of document are presented in three lists:

  • Individuals: records pertaining to business dealings with individuals (including individual debts).
  • Estates/Plantations: records detailing the estates the Lascelles family had in Barbados, Jamaica and Tobago. General papers covering all estates are also included.
  • General Papers: records covering general administration, London commission merchants and appeals.

Multiple selections can be made both within (by holding the 'Ctrl' key and selecting using the mouse) and between the three lists - records from ALL categories selected will be returned.

Order by
This facility allows users to choose how their results are ordered: by Record ID, by Year or by Category.

Please contact email@emailaddress.ac.uk if you require further information on searching the archive.