Case Study: Historic Christ Church turns slave archives into a public, searchable database with Knack

How Knack helped turn a side project into a comprehensive historical record system

Historic Christ Church researcher Patrick Heffernan, PhD, faced the daunting task of turning thousands of scattered archival documents about the Corotoman Estate into usable records. What began as notes on his personal computer grew into a project tracking over 4,000 references to enslaved people from 1656–1862, with many individuals named and listed in complex, cross-referenced documents—far more data than could be managed manually.

Patrick built a public web app with Knack to store, organize, link and search the records, using filters and connected pages to make the material accessible to non‑technical users. The database now identifies more than 1,200 individual enslaved people from 200+ documents, delivered new historical conclusions (for example, population growth driven more by childbirth than purchases), enabled genealogical discoveries like the Tom Gumby lineage, and is being expanded to include indentured-servant and parish land records.

Historic Christ Church

Patrick Heffernan

Researcher