Alabama, Southern Claims Commission Approved Claims, 1871-1880

What is in This Collection?

The United States Congress established Southern Claims Commission the Southern Claims Commission, on March 3, 1871. The purpose of the Commission was to review and make recommendations to the House of Representatives regarding claims from Southerners who were loyal to the Union, and who had involuntarily “furnished stores and supplies for the use of the U.S. Army” during the Civil War. Later the law was extended to resources taken by the U.S. Navy. Claims were processed through May of 1880. Only about one third of submitted claims were approved. The images in this collection show the claims approved by the Southern Claims commission for Alabama. The collection is NARA publication M2062 Southern Claims Commission Approved Claims, 1871-1880: Alabama and is from RG 217, Records of the Accounting Officers of the Department of the Treasury. It contains 828 approved applications arranged by county and then alphabetical by name.

• Southern Claims Commission. 3/10/1871-3/10/1880. Organization Authority Record

Related National Archives Collections

These collections are available from the National Archives. These contain records, some of which may not be available online. The link will take you to the National Archives website where you can get more information on each collection.

• Disallowed Claims Files, 1871 - 1880. NAID 562207
• Alphabetical Geographical Lists of Claims, 1871 - 1873. NAID 6256575
• Registers of Claim Cases Heard by the Commissioners, 1871 - 1880. NAID 6256588
• Name Indexes to the Registers of Claim Cases, 1871 - 1873. NAID 6256845
• Register of Claims, 6/6/1871 - 6/17/1871. NAID 12008935
• Barred Claims Files, 1871 - 1880. NAID 562208
• Settled Case Files for Claims Approved by the Southern Claims Commission, 1871 - 1880. NAID 566157 - This collection contains digital images of approved claims you can search within this series

Related Articles

• Sarah Larsen. Records of the Southern Claims Commission Prologue: Journal of the National Archives 12 (Winter, 1980): 207-218. FS Library 973 B2p
• Reginald Washington. The Southern Claims Commission: A Source for African- American Roots Prologue: Journal of the National Archives 27 #1 (Winter 1995): 374-382 FS Library 973 B2p

Additional records and/or images may be added to this collection in the future.

What Can These Records Tell Me?

Information may differ between cases and may include any of the following:

Collection Content

Sample Images

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  1865 Claim Petition

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  1865 Account of Property

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  1876 Claim Certificate

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  1865 Petitioner's Statement (page 1)

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  1873 Petitioner's Statement (page 2)

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  Testimony

Inventory

For a list of all the titles included in this Historical Records publication see Alabama, Southern Claims Commission Approved Claims - Inventory