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 Arkansas, Series 1: Letters Sent.
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 Arkansas during the Reconstruction Era.
The four volumes of letters sent, March 1866–July 1870, are arranged chronologically; each volume contains a name index. The letters in Volume 1 (29) are unnumbered; those in the remaining volumes are numbered consecutively by date of receipt within a year. The first three volumes contain fair copies of letters sent; Volume 4 (32) contains press copies. The letters dated January–February 1869 in the second volume (pages 134 – 144) are duplicated in the third volume (pages 9 – 20). Duplicate letters were microfilmed and digitized because they were indexed in both volumes.
In the left margin of the pages in Volume 1 (29) are names of the persons to whom the letters were sent and fractional notations. In these notations, the numerator refers to the page number in the volume on which the last preceding letter to the same person is listed, and the denominator refers to the page containing the next subsequent letter to the same person.