Exploring the Stories of American Women in the Freedmen’s Bureau Records
As a 2022 Because of Her Story intern with the American Women’s History Initiative, I had the privilege to work with Smithsonian’s Transcription Center and the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the Freedmen’s Bureau Transcription Project. During this internship, my fellow intern and I created a comprehensive instructional resource to assist the dedicated community of Transcription Center volunpeers in deciphering challenging transcriptions. In addition, we endeavored to find, research, and broadcast the stories of women found within these records.
Although the name may sound deceiving, the Freedmen’s Bureau Records contain a multitude of profound stories about Freedwomen. These records are invaluable primary sources that not only open a window into daily life for southern Black people during Reconstruction, but they also offer insight into the often-erased history of African American women. The stories of Isabella and Eddy Harris, Elizabeth Grant, and Harriet Smith are just a few examples of the ordinary women found within the records who advocated for themselves, their families, and their communities in a world that actively worked to prevent them from succeeding.
Isabella and Eddy Harris
In the Reconstruction South, Black families still faced the threat of separation even after emancipation from slavery. Isabella and Eddy Harris, a mother and daughter found in the Freedmen’s Bureau records, experienced this reality.
In February 1867, Isabella Harris, a Black woman living in Wilkes County, Georgia, asked the Freedmen’s Bureau to help find her missing teenage daughter. Harris’s fifteen — or sixteen-year-old daughter — Edna (affectionately nicknamed Eddy), was taken away from her mother in early February of that year. Isabella reported that three men “did entice, persuade and decoy” Eddy into signing an exploitative labor contract, without her mother’s consent, that took Eddy away from Georgia to work on a plantation in Monticello, Florida. The plantation was owned by a white man named H. S. Linton, who claimed that Eddy voluntarily signed a contract to work for him. Given that Eddy was a fifteen-year-old child and did not have the guidance of her mother, it is reasonable to assume that Eddy was coerced into leaving Georgia.
Harris initially went to the courts to demand that her daughter be brought home and the men who took her arrested. Harris could not read or write, so she dictated her claim to James Alexander, the County Solicitor, who helped her get an arrest warrant for kidnapping.
Harris initially went to the courts to demand that her daughter be brought home and the men who took her arrested. Harris could not read or write, so she dictated her claim to James Alexander, the County Solicitor, who helped her get an arrest warrant for kidnapping.
However, since the men who took Eddy crossed state lines into Florida and were outside the jurisdiction of Georgia law enforcement, the Wilkes County Sheriff could not (or would not) aid in securing the arrest. Because local law enforcement would not help, Harris and Alexander had to enlist the Freedmen’s Bureau to ensure that Eddy would be brought back and her kidnappers caught.
The southern courts were not a place where African Americans could easily obtain justice. In fact, the “justice” system, including the police, often actively worked to curb new rights afforded to freedmen and women during Reconstruction. As a result, freedpeople often turned to the Freedmen’s Bureau to seek justice for the wrongs committed against them, as Isabella Harris did when her daughter was taken against her will.
It was not until the end of April, nearly three whole months after Eddy had been taken, that the arrest warrant was finally sent to Florida, where H.S. Linton resided. On May 24th, Harris received word that Linton agreed to send her daughter home, but Eddy had not yet returned. Alexander wrote in this final letter that he and Harris “look for her now daily.” Harris had to wait almost four months for any indication of her daughter’s whereabouts, and we do not know how much longer she had to wait for her daughter’s return.
Unfortunately, this is where the current paper trail ends. We have not yet transcribed any documents that indicate that Linton or the other men who took Eddy were arrested, nor have we found any records that suggest Eddy was reunited with her mother.
Isabella and Eddy Harris’s story is not an anomaly. It is indicative of a larger predatory practice common during Reconstruction known as “binding out.” Many white southerners, to maintain control over African American labor and perpetuate slavery after emancipation, would enter Black children into exploitative labor contracts, typically without the consent of the children's parents. Contracts would dictate that children, often even younger than Eddy, would need to work for an employer until a certain time limit. Throughout the Freedmen’s Bureau records, we can find many letters from Black parents who appealed to the Bureau to annul these contracts and have their children returned to them.
African Americans faced separation from their families, labor exploitation, and unjust legal systems during the Reconstruction period. The story of Isabella and Eddy Harris is just one example of how Black people in the Reconstruction South dealt with this violent reality.
You can help ensure that the stories of women like Isabella and Eddy Harris are not lost by transcribing the Freedmen’s Bureau records.
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Madeleine Roberts-Ganim was a 2022 Because of Her Story Intern with the Smithsonian Transcription Center and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. She is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in History and French at the University of Chicago.
This post on Isabella and Eddy Harris is part of a larger series by Roberts-Ganim and fellow intern, Jenna Lugo, highlighting American women in the Freedmen's Bureau Records. Browse the Transcription Center Blog, Marginalia, for additional entries.
