Google Search: BUREAU OF REFUGEES, FREEDMEN, AND ABANDONED LANDS
EXCERPT:
"THE BUREAU OF REFUGEES, FREEDMEN, AND ABANDONED LANDS,"
by David Thackery, an excerpt from "Finding Your African American
Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide.
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually
referred to simply as the Freedmen's Bureau, was established by the
federal government in 1865. The bureau was primarily concerned with
assisting ex-slaves in their transition to life after slavery,
although it also aided indigent whites shortly after the close of the
war to some extent as well. Its activities among freed people were
varied, including drawing up and enforcing labor, feeding the hungry,
conducting marriages, leasing abandoned land, providing
transportation, and, in general, presiding over Reconstruction
policy. The bureau's records hold great genealogical potential;
however, their contents elude a concise description.
Records from Bureau headquarters in Washington, D.C. have been
microfilmed but are not of much genealogical value. The next level
down is that of the assistant commissioners, each one of whom
presided over bureau activities in a given state, the only exception
being the assistant commissioner for the District of Columbia. The
following assistant commissioners' records have been microfilmed by
the National Archives, in whose care they reside:
Alabama (M809),
Arkansas (M979),
District of Columbia (M1055),
Georgia (M798),
Louisiana (M1027),
Mississippi (M826),
North Carolina (M843),
South Carolina (M869),
Tennessee (M999),
Texas (M821),
Virginia (M1053).
Because of differences in record-keeping procedures, and possibly in
the division of responsibility of record retention and storage
between state headquarters and the field offices, their contents are
by no means uniform. The contents also reflect a difference in the
experiences of the state districts as well as the probability that
more records survived from some states than from others.
The first fact the genealogist must understand is that the Freedmen's
Bureau was not founded to create genealogically useful documents, and
the same must be said for the microfilming of these records. Indeed,
the records of the assistant commissioner for a given state may
generally be without great genealogical utility.
To get a sense of
the contents of the records for a given district, consult
"Black
Studies: A Select Catalog of National Archives Microfilm
Publications" (Washington, D.C.: National Archives, 1984). All of the
district records contain correspondence and telegrams, as well as
indexes to these documents. Much of these are intra-bureau or intra-
government communications so, as record groups, they hold little
genealogical potential. The assistant commissioners' records will
also contain various reports from the district field offices. Again,
many of these will hold little of genealogical interest, although
those reporting "outrages" (lynchings and other assaults upon African
Americans) could be especially interesting, albeit somewhat chilling,
to the genealogist. It should be noted that such reports, though
generally a constant in district records, do not list a great many
incidents.
Of all the assistant commissioners' records, those for Mississippi
hold the greatest genealogical potential. Only in Mississippi were
local marriage registers included with the state district records.
These are from Vicksburg, Davis Bend (just below Vicksburg), Natchez,
and Meridian. These are among the most informative-and among the most
poignant-of any American marriage records. Covering the years 1865
and 1866, these registers record the validation of "slave marriages"
that occurred before emancipation and also record the marriages of
men and women who were just beginning life together following the
war. Although the names of parents are not provided, the racial
identity of the bride and groom and their parents is one of the
categories of information included. Often this description can be
quite specific (for example, fraction of negro blood). Residence is
also included, many of the men being Union soldiers, in which case a
unit is indicated.
But probably the most important documents among the Mississippi
assistant commissioner's records are the labor contracts. Most of
these were implemented in 1865, the remainder being drawn up between
1866 and 1868. These agreements were primarily between ex-slaves and
plantation owners throughout the state, although not every county is
represented. Given the fact that all members of a freedman's family
are usually mentioned by name, and the possibility that the contracts
were executed with their former owners, the importance of these
documents cannot be exaggerated. Many of the laborers are identified
by given name and surname, although the majority are still
represented only by a first name. The arrangement on microfilm of
this extensive collection of documents will strike the researcher as
haphazard; searching them is problematic. The arrangement is
chronological, with instances of records for a given county being
clumped together. The Mississippi Department of Archives and History
has developed a microfiche index to these records.
Labor contracts are also found in the assistant commissioners'
records for Arkansas and Tennessee, again ranging from 1865 to 1868.
In the former, the arrangement is by year and alphabetically
thereunder by name of employer. In the latter, the contracts are
arranged in two sub-series, the first containing contracts in which
the contracting parties were from Tennessee, with the arrangement
being alphabetical by county and thereunder chronological. The
second-and smaller-sub-series pertains to contracts with out-of-state
employers.
Another useful source is the collection of transportation records
from the assistant commissioner for the District of Columbia.
Following the Civil War, many ex-slaves were attempting to reunite
with family members separated by circumstances of slavery or war, and
many were assisted by the bureau. The extensive records for
transportation assistance from Washington, D.C. provide evidence for
journeys to places as far away as Wisconsin.
The researcher who is contemplating the use of the Freedmen's Bureau
records should always take into account the possible mobility of the
people under study. Many freed people from Virginia and Maryland
received transportation out of Washington, just as, for example, many
ex-slaves from the Louisiana side of the Mississippi River were
married in Vicksburg, Davis Bend and Natchez, Mississippi.
The next level below that of the assistant commissioners' records is
that of the field offices. With the exceptions of the records of the
Arkansas field offices and portions of the field office records from
Louisiana and Tennessee, these materials have not been microfilmed
and exist only in the form of the original documents stored at the
National Archives. A final description of these records has yet to be
published; however, a preliminary inventory was generated in 1973 and
can be found in some genealogical libraries. As with the state
records, the contents of the field office records can vary
considerably. It is probable that the proportion of genealogically
useful records is much higher in the field office records than in the
records of the assistant commissioners. If at all possible, the
researcher should consult the preliminary inventory to determine,
first of all, whether there are any field records for the localities
under consideration and whether the records being described would
have any genealogical potential. For example, any labor contracts or
records of apprenticeship or marriage should be of interest.
___________________________________________________________________
A native of Urbana, Ohio, the late David Thackery had a life-long
passion for history and research.
As head of the Newberry Library's
(Chicago, Ill.) local and family history department, he worked to
enhance the library's collection of African American family history
sources and compiled some of the best bibliographic sources available
for African American researchers.
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