GLHTA has added 78 reels of microfilm on the Records for Texas Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865-1870. The titles are “Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Texas, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865-1869″, www.archives.gov/research/microfilm/m821.pdf; “Records of the Field Offices for the State of Texas, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865-1870″, www.archives.gov/research/microfilm/m1912.pdf; and “Records of the Superintendent of Education for the State of Texas, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865-1870″, www.archives.gov/research/microfilm/m822.pdf. The Internet links lead to PDF’s about the microfilm available.
“In the years following the Civil War, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (the Freedmen’s Bureau) provided assistance to tens of thousands of former slaves and impoverished whites in the Southern States and the District of Columbia….The Bureau was established in the War Department in 1865 to undertake the relief effort and the unprecedented social reconstruction that would bring freedpeople to full citizenship. It 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 records left by the Freedmen’s Bureau through its work between 1865 and 1872 constitute the richest and most extensive documentary source available for investigating the African American experience in the post-Civil War and Reconstruction eras….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. No name indexes are available at this time, but the documents can be rewarding, particularly since they provide full names, residences, and, often, the names of former masters and plantations.” You can learn more by reading about the Freedmen’s Bureau, 1865-1872 at www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/freedmens-bureau/#state.
This information is not available online at this time. Other states Bureau are available. Go to the link to see what and where the information will be available. Come see us for the Texas records.
Great news!