United States, Freedmen's Bureau, Records of the Assistant Commissioner, 1865-1872

Images of records of the Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (often called the Freedmen’s Bureau). The bureau was created in 1865 at the end of the American Civil War to supervise relief efforts including education, health care, food and clothing, refugee camps, legalization of marriages, employment, labor contracts, and securing back pay, bounty payments and pensions. These records include letters and endorsements sent and received, account books, applications for rations, applications for relief, court records, labor contracts, registers of bounty claimants, registers of complaints, registers of contracts, registers of disbursements, registers of freedmen issued rations, registers of patients, reports, rosters of officers and employees, special and general orders and circulars received, special orders and circulars issued, records relating to claims, court trials, property restoration, and homesteads. This collection corresponds with the following NARA microfilm publications, Alabama, M809; Arkansas, M979; District of Columbia, M1055; Florida, M1869; Georgia, M798; Louisiana, M1027; Mississippi, M826; South Carolina, M869; Tennessee, M999; Texas, M821; Virginia, M1048.