The Freedman Bank Records are sometimes useful to genealogy researchers and are available through FamilySearch, some online library collections, and other genealogy databases.
Here is my experience with them:
First, after emancipation from slavery, citizens who had been enslaved were allowed to own bank accounts for the first time. However, at this time not all ex-slaves had names they liked. Some continued to use a surname of their latest slave-owner, for example, but they were free to rename themselves. As a result, a number of relatives might choose different surnames. And some would rename themselves first and last. And some tried on a surname and didn't like it and changed it again. Changing names did not require a legal process.
Came the day that an African American client of mine, who really only needed his mother's death certificate, and learned the oral history he had been given was not correct when he read it, asked me to go a little further. Sure, that his mother's name was highly unusual, I gave it a search in Freedman Bank and because the name was so unusual, I was lead to that his mother had been named after her ex-slave grandmother. (From there I proofed as much as possible.) This was perhaps the fastest genealogy search I ever had that lead to the enslaved ancestor.
Another factor to consider is that the Freedman Bank didn't last too long. According to FamilySearch, The Freedman's Savings and Trust company failed in 1874 and many lost their savings.
Additionally, I found surnames that were German or otherwise not distinctly African-American or of English origins in this database. Some people who were not ex-slaves or African American did deposit in Freedman Bank. The decision to have an account was probably as easy as that they lived near a branch or believed in the cause. So these are BANK RECORDS and not everyone in the database was ever a slave.
And consider that ex-slaves may have deposited in one place and then moved.
Overall, I don't think this database is helpful to most people but it can't be skipped in case it is!
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