Following the lead of similar laws in California, Illinois and Iowa, the State of Maryland is about to make insurance information on pre-1865 Maryland slaves 
available to the public through data that will be studied and stored at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore. This could be a wonderful source of data for African-American genealogists. Don’t expect to see the data before 2011, as the insurance companies have until then to gather and submit said information. Following is a teaser from an article in the April 17, 2009 Baltimore Sun.
Insurance companies doing business in Maryland will have to disclose their histories of slavery-related insurance before 1865, under a bill signed into law this week.
Similar initiatives have become law in California, Illinois and Iowa, and advocates say the mandatory disclosures will add to public knowledge of the slave-era economy in Maryland.
“As a genealogist and someone interested in my own history, this allows me to look at records that perhaps are not public records and that are held by insurance companies,” said Sen. Lisa A. Gladden, a Baltimore Democrat who sponsored the bill unanimously passed by the General Assembly this year.
Gladden said the bill is an initiative of students at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore, where the published reports will be stored.
