Fantastic Find: Mapping the Freedmen's Bureau

Some notices concerning the Freedman's Bureau in The Daily Phoenix (Columbia, South Carolina), 17 Aug 1865, pg 1, col 3; digital image, accessed from Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84027008/1865-08-17/ed-1/seq-1/) on 2 Oct 2015.  An interesting history of this newspaper here.

The federal agency Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, AKA Freedmen's Bureau***, was created in 1865 to help freed slaves and poor whites.  Many records were generated from this short-lived agency, providing amazingly detailed information for anyone doing African American genealogy.  The records have been available publicly for a while now, but the process of learning how to use the records is somewhat daunting.

Toni Carrier and Angela Walton-Raji have created a site, Mapping the Freedmen's Bureau, which takes most of the tedious steps out of researching previously enslaved ancestors by displaying records sets (Freedman's Bureau Offices, Freedman's Bank Branches, and Freedman's Bureau Hospitals) by location, and providing links to the relevant records in scanned FamilySearch.



Hat tip to Sunny at Lisa Louise Cooke's Genealogy Gems.


*** More info on Freedman's Bureau at FamilySearch, the National Archives, Ancestry's Wiki, and Wikipedia.








© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Research: Were My Kin’s White Neighbors Descendants of My Ancestor’s Owners?

This useful guide to researching relationships between freed people, their descendants, and their white neighbors came to my attention through a post on New England Historic Genealogical Society's (NEHGS) Facebook page.

Originally posted on The Root, Henry Louis Gates Jr. consulting with Christopher Lee, a researcher from NEHGS, responds to the query Were My Kin’s White Neighbors Descendants of My Ancestor’s Owners? with a variety of avenues to explore.

What we found illustrates the close relationship that the emancipated people and their former owners frequently had in the years following the end of the U.S. Civil War, and the ways old patterns of power and economic interdependency endured.

NEHGS also has a free webinar about the topic posted earlier this year on YouTube.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Great News: Freedmen's Bureau Records To Be Digitized and Made Available Online Free!

By now you've probably heard of the announcement from last Friday* that 1.5 million records from the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (the Freedmen's Bureau) will soon be available online free. It's estimated that these handwritten documents, which provide invaluable documentary sources of information for the four million newly freed people, ** will be completely digitized by late next year in time for the opening of the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington.

[Illustration showing an African American soldier at his wedding in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Contributor Names: Waud, Alfred R. (Alfred Rudolph), 1828-1891, artist; Created / Published:1866.Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. ]

[Marriage Certificate of Thomas Harris and Jane Harris (Shute) Issued April 28, 1866

Tennessee, Lebanon, Wilson County, sent to Freedmen's Bureau Headquarters, 

Washington, DC, M1875, roll 4. National Archives]

But getting all these records online is only the beginning. Until they've been indexed it will be difficult and time-consuming to hunt for individuals.*** If you're looking for a worthwhile project to spend time on, you can help by going to this website and becoming one of the Project's volunteers.

To help bring thousands of records to light, the Freedmen’s Bureau Project was created as a set of partnerships between FamilySearch International and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Afro­-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS), and the California African American Museum. 

Tens of thousands of volunteers are needed to make these records searchable online. No specific time commitment is required, and anyone may participate. Volunteers simply log on, pull up as many scanned documents as they like, and enter the names and dates into the fields provided. Once published, information for millions of African Americans will be accessible, allowing families to build their family trees and connect with their ancestors.

I was one of the thousands of volunteers who helped get the 1940 U.S. Census indexed and online in an earlier joint project. It was expected to take a year, but we got it done in five months!****

I'm looking forward to getting involved in the Freedmen's Bureau Project too.

*Which appropriately was June 19th, the 150th Juneteenth.
**"The Freedmen’s Bureau made records that include marriages and church and financial details as well as full names, dates of birth and histories of slave ownership." (quote from The Guardian article referenced above.)
***To date only a very few records have been indexed.
****It was very interesting, getting a view into people's lives from over 70 years ago. And given some of the handwriting of the census takers, there was also an element of puzzle-solving.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.