Introduction: In this article, Gena Philibert-Ortega gives tips for using the records of the Freedmen’s Bureau, 1865-1872. Gena is a genealogist and author of the book “From the Family Kitchen.”
After the Civil War, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (“Freedmen’s Bureau”) assisted former slaves and impoverished whites in the Southern states and the District of Columbia between 1865-1872.
According to the National Archives and Records Administration’s website African American Records: Freedmen’s Bureau, the Bureau:
“…issued food and clothing, operated hospitals and temporary camps, helped locate family members, promoted education, helped freedmen legalize marriages, provided employment, supervised labor contracts, provided legal representation, investigated racial confrontations, settled freedmen on abandoned or confiscated lands, and worked with African American soldiers and sailors and their heirs to secure back pay, bounty payments, and pensions.”
The Bureau’s records are available to the public on microfilm, and some records have been digitized and indexed. According to its website:
“These records present the genealogist and social historian with an unequaled wealth of information that extends the reach of black family studies. Documents such as local censuses, marriage records, and medical records provide freedpeople’s full names and former masters; Federal censuses through 1860 listed slaves only statistically under the master’s household.”
Types of Records
So, what kinds of records did the Freedmen’s Bureau create? There’s a wide range with rich genealogical information including marriage records, food rations, “census lists, details of labor and apprenticeship agreements, back pay records, complaint registers, personal data about black soldiers (including company and regiment), school records, hospital registers, census records, and records of murders committed against freedmen.”(1) What this means is that records can include such information as name, age, location, familial relationships, occupation, and more.
Information from records differs not only by type but also location. In this example of a marriage record from Mississippi, note the inclusion of previous relationships, number of children and parents’ race. This is not true of all marriage records created through the Freedmen’s Bureau; but consider how valuable these records are for researching a previously enslaved ancestor who left few records behind.
Finding Records
In 2015, FamilySearch conducted a yearlong Freedmen’s Bureau project utilizing 25,000 volunteers who indexed the names of 1.8 million people in partnership with the National Archives, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, and the California African American Museum.(2)
Those images and indexes are now available on FamilySearch. You can learn more about searching the Freedmen’s Bureau records and what information they contain on the FamilySearch Family History Research Wiki page, African American Freedmen’s Bureau Records.
Mapping the Freedmen’s Bureau is a website that assists researcher with locating:
“The sites where Freedman’s Bureau offices were located… In addition, other institutions that served former slaves are marked – the branches of the Freedman’s Savings Bank, Freedmen Schools, contraband camps, and even the location of battle sites where men who were in the U.S. Colored Troops fought.”
Once you locate the area where your ancestor lived, you can click on the icon marking that area. This will provide you with information, the National Archive microfilm number for the records, and a link to see the digitized records on FamilySearch.
The Freedmen’s Bureau records are an important resource for researching your African American ancestor in the post-Civil War years. Thanks to the work of volunteers and organizations we now are able to search or browse these records to learn more.
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(1) “African American Freedmen’s Bureau Records,” FamilySearch Family History Research Wiki (https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/African_American_Freedmen%27s_Bureau_Records: accessed 21 February 2018).
(2) “The Freedmen’s Bureau Project,” Discover Freedmen (http://www.discoverfreedmen.org/: accessed 8 Feb 2018).