Texas Assistant Commissioner, Records Relating to Murders, Outrages, and Criminal Offenses, Record of Criminal Offenses, Vol. 1

About the Project

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 Assistant Commissioner for Texas, Series 8: Records Relating to Murders, Outrages, and Other Criminal Offenses.

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 Mississippi during the Reconstruction Era.

The entries in the "record of criminal offenses," September 1865–December 1868, are numbered consecutively. The entries in the first volume for the period 1865–1868 are not in chronological sequence up to page 43; however, beginning with entry 491 on page 43, and continuing throughout volumes 2 and 3, the entries that span February 1867–December 1868 are arranged chronologically according to the date a particular offense was reported. The information recorded for each entry includes the town from which the offense was reported, the county in which the offense was committed, the name and race of the criminal, the nature of the offense, the name and race of the injured party, a statement of the circumstances, the name of the reporting individual, the date the offense was reported, the action taken by the Bureau, and the action taken by the civil authorities. Most of the entries pertain to crimes committed by whites against freedmen, but crimes of whites against whites, freedmen against freedmen, and freedmen against whites were also recorded. The "record" may have been at least partially compiled from the registered reports described below.

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Project Progress (details)

160 pages completed

Difficulty

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About Project Difficulty

Level 1 - BEGINNER

Content: all typed
Language: English
Format: letters, diaries, flyers, pamphlets, and one-page documents
Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: none required

Level 2

Content: mostly typed, handwritten in print, or otherwise very clearly written/readable
Language: English
Format: memorabilia, advertisements, image captions, telegrams, diaries, letters, notes
Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: none required

Level 3 - INTERMEDIATE

Content: typed and handwritten materials in cursive or print
Language: English
Format: newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, letters/diaries/notes that may include annotations or margin notes
Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: experience reading cursive writing may be useful

Level 4

Content: handwritten materials, primarily in cursive or somewhat difficult to read (predominantly from the 19th and 20th centuries) , audio recordings that are relatively easy to hear/decipher, and scientific materials
Language: English and/or other languages that use Roman script but may require the use of diacritics (French, Spanish, German, Italian, etc.)
Format: audio recordings, letters, diaries, notes and other written materials, projects with templated fields and special instructions
Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: some knowledge of non-English Roman-character/script languages and diacritics may be useful, as well as experience reading cursive handwriting. A general knowledge or familiarity with scientific terminology.

Level 5 - ADVANCED

Content: handwritten materials in cursive (from the 19th century or earlier) or in a non-Roman script language, audio recordings that are difficult to hear or are not in English, specialty materials/projects such as numismatics projects and the Project Phaedra notebooks
Language: foreign languages that use non-Roman characters (Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Greek/Cyrillic, Native American and Indigenous languages, etc.) and English
Format: audio recordings, columned data/tables, manuscripts, letters, diaries, notes, currency sheets, coins
Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: knowledge of a specific language and access to a keyboard with the characters in that language may be required for certain projects. Experience reading cursive handwriting and familiarity with 19th century (or prior) handwriting and conventions/abbreviations may be useful, as well as knowledge of scientific terminology, astrophysics data, or linguistics.

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