The 150th anniversary of Juneteenth was this past Friday, and on that day a major project was announced that would help African Americans reconnect with their Civil War era relatives. The Freedmen’s Bureau:
The Freedmen’s Bureau was organized to assist freedmen in 15 states and the District of Columbia after the war. The bureau opened schools, managed hospitals and gave support to an estimated 4 million slaves. The 1.5 million images released Friday are from the actual reports filed by the 900 agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau who were located across the country.
The Freedmen’s Bureau Project released the digitized records of those Freedmen’s Bureau agents, listing the names of millions of former slaves. Lead by the genealogical group FamilySearch, there is a full court press to index the names on those records, so that families can search for their ancestors. As the WP article notes, African American families who are working on researching family trees often can’t get much more information beyond 1870 or so. (That is certainly true for part of my family.) The hope is that making these records easily available, those families might connect to those ancestors. From a comment by Joanne Christian (who helped organize the launch party at the Delaware Historical Society) last Friday:
This release and access launches today in an effort to digitize millions of historical records surrrounding the FREEDMENS BUREAU after the emancipation of slaves. It’s a HUGE undertaking promising so many family connections and historical data that impacts so many in their search for connectedness and history surrounding the days post early emancipation. GET INVOLVED and help be part of bringing this history alive as the Smithsonian prepares for the 2016 unveiling of their new National Museum of African American History and Culture. Events will begin today, to “show” you how and just reach out to me if you have an interest or a group wanting to help or know more about this transformational access–all free–given to see these records are made available to the families and the public. Talk about transparency!! 😉
(Sorry Joanne, I couldn’t find the infographic to embed here.)
“As I pondered this whole notion of the Freedmen’s Bureau and the digitization of the records, the African American community, as you well know, through slavery was split up, divided. Families were torn apart, and we began this community, becoming a community of foster care, actually—unofficial foster care. We took care of each other. We saw a child that did not have a mother or father, and we took them under our wings. We don’t know who our family really is or from where we originated, for the most part. This information would shed light on all of that and bring a lot of clarity and a lot of reasons to celebrate, so having it digitized would be fantastic. It would bring validity to the stories that have been passed down for generations.” Dean Williams Ed.D Pepperdine University #DiscoverFreedmen http://bit.ly/1Ipis8j
Posted by FamilySearch on Friday, June 19, 2015
Are you interested in helping with the indexing task? 2016 isn’t that far away. Check out the Freedmen’s Bureau Project and signup to help.