The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, often referred to as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was established on March 3, 1865. The duties of the Freedmen’s Bureau included supervision of all affairs relating to refugees, freedmen, and the custody of abandoned lands and property. These documents come from the Records of the Superintendent of Education for the State of Georgia, Series 2: Registers of Letters Received.
Additional resources are available on the Freedmen's Bureau Instructions Page.
Please help us transcribe these records to learn more about the lives of formerly enslaved men and women in Georgia during the Reconstruction Era.
According to the recordkeeping practices of the day, incoming communications were entered in registers of letters received. The entries in the 5 volumes of registers of letters received, September 1865–July 1870, are generally arranged in chronological order and numbered in a separate numerical sequence for each volume. The entries in the registers usually give the date of receipt of the letter, the name of the author, the date of the letter, the place of origin, an abstract of the contents, and the number of the register entry. Some of the endorsements, which were written either by the Superintendent of Education or by officers forwarding the communications to him, have been copied into the registers. A name index is at the beginning of each register. The number in the index refers to the page number in the register on which the letter is entered and not to the number of the register entry.
Not all letters entered in the registers are among the series of letters received by the Superintendent of Education. Some letters were forwarded to the Assistant Commissioner or to the Bureau headquarters in Washington, and others were returned to the sender. The National Archives has placed an asterisk (-*-) near the register entry number of the letters that are still among the letters received.