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 Texas, Series 4: Monthly Form Reports.
Additional resources including a list of Freedmen's Bureau staff in Texas 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 Texas during the Reconstruction Era.
The monthly reports from teachers and subassistant commissioners, October 1865–July 1870, are arranged chronologically by month. The series consists primarily of the teachers' reports, and there are no reports from subassistant commissioners until February 1868. There are no reports of any kind for January 1868, and for the next two months there are only subassistant commissioners' reports. For the period March–December 1868, there are both subassistant commissioners' and teachers' reports, with the latter occasionally filed as enclosures to the former. For the period January 1869–July 1870, the series consists mostly of teachers' reports, but there are also a few reports from local district Superintendents of Education.
The forms used for teachers' reports contained the school regulations that were devised in the Office of the Superintendent of Education. The forms also required statistical data relating to the number of pupils enrolled, attendance, and subjects taught in day, night, and Sunday schools. The amount of tuition paid by the students was also to be specified, and space was allowed for narrative remarks by the teacher. During the years of the Bureau's operation in Texas, minor changes were periodically made in the forms, but the format and content remained essentially the same.
Some of the reports apparently pertain to non–Bureau schools. The subassistant commissioners' and district superintendents' reports requested information concerning the number and types of schools in each subdistrict, the number of teachers, the number of schoolhouses and their conditions, the need for additional schools and the ability of freedmen to support them, public sentiment toward the education of freedmen and poor whites, the need for northern charitable aid, and other matters concerning the schools in the area.