Recommendations by Dr. Phillip Troutman, principal investigator:
Fox Genovese, Elizabeth. Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South. 1988.

Redford, Dorothy Spruill, with Michael D’Orso. Somerset Homecoming: Recovering a Lost Heritage. 2000.

Terry, Gail S. “Sustaining the Bonds of Kinship in a Trans-Appalachian Migration, 1790-1811: The Cabell-Breckinridge Slaves Move West”, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, v. 102, October 1994.

Wiencek, Henry. The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White. 2000.

Recommendations by Leni Sorensen, consultant:
Bancroft, Frederic. Slave Trading in the Old South. Baltimore: J.H. Furst Company, 1931.

Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community, Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.

Bogger, Tommy Lee. The Slave and Free Black Community in Norfolk, 1775- 1865. University Press of Virginia, 1976.

Breeden, James, ed. Advice Among Masters: The Ideal in Slave Management in the Old South. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1980.

Bush, Barbara. Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650-1838. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

Campbell, Edward D.C., Jr. and Kym S. Rice, eds. Before Freedom Came: African-American Life in the Antebellum South. University Press of Virginia, 1991.

Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

Franklin, John Hope and Loren Schweninger. Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925. Vintage: Random House, 1976.

Harris, J. William, ed. Society and Culture in the Slave South. London: Routledge, 1992.

Jones, Norrece T., Jr. Born a Child of Freedom, Yet a Slave: Mechanisms of Control and Strategies of Resistance in Antebellum South Carolina. Wesleyan University Press, 1990.

Klein, Herbert S. Slavery in the Americas: A Comparative Study of Virginia and Cuba. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Inc., 1989.

Kolchin, Peter. Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom. Belknap: Harvard University Press, 1987.
----- American Slavery 1619-1877. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993.

Leavitt, Judith Walzer. Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750 to 1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Mullin, Gerald W. Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.

Oakes, James. The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders. Vintage: Random House, 1983.

Perdue, Charles, Jr. Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1976.

Prude, Jonathan. "To Look upon the "Lower Sort": Runaway Ads and the Appearance of Unfree Laborers in America, 1750-1800." The Journal of  American History. Volume 78, Issue 1 (Jun., 1991), 124-159.

Roberts, Robert. The House Servant’s Directory: or a Monitor for Private Families Comprising Hints on the Arrangement and Performance of Servant’s Work. (Originally published by Monroe and Francis, 1827.) M. E. Sharpe, 1998.

Schwarz, Philip J. Twice Condemned: Slaves and the Criminal Laws of Virginia. LSU Press, 1988.

Seigel, Frederick F. Southern Distinctiveness: Tobacco and Society in Danville, Virginia, 1780-1865. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987.

Smith, Billy G. and Richard Wojtowicz. Black Who Stole Themselves: Advertisements for Runaways in the Pennsylvania Gazette, 1728-1790. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.

Stampp, Kenneth, M. Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. Vintage: Random House, 1956.

Tadman, Michael. Speculators and Slaves: masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South. University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.

Vlach, John Michael. Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

Windley, Lathan A. Runaway Slave Advertisements: A Documentary History from the 1730s to 1790. Volume 1: Virginia and North Carolina. Greenwood Press, 1983.