FREEDMEN'S MARRIAGE BUREAU RECORDS 1846-1867 : USING THE ANCESTRY TM GENEALOGY DATABASE : LET THIS FUEL YOUR HISTORICAL RESEARCH!

I've posted about the Freedman * Bank Records before, but did you know that the Freedman Bureau also kept a record of former slaves (and some "free colored") who married soon after they were free from enslavement? 

In the past I've also posted on some methodology for African-American research, stating first of all it is American research and one ought to proceed with going back as neatly as possible, using census records, both federal and state, if possible. If a researcher can find their people on the census after liberation, they have some names. Other than that, there may be some oral history in the family but one must be careful to accept stories without some proofing. Our African-American cautionary tale is that upon liberation, a person could choose to change their surname and some did more than once, wanting to feel comfortable with that surname, and sometimes various family members chose various names. That said, I wonder how often that happened.

I explored this database for a few hours recently and want to give you some information that may be helpful.

So for the purposes of this post I'm using the Ancestry TM genealogy database. To find the database called Freedman Bureau Marriage Records you want to go into NEW COLLECTIONS (WHICH ACTUALLY ALLOWS YOU TO SEARCH THE ENTIRE CATALOG, not just recently added collections. You will see to the top left the words CARD CATALOG.) Put the word Freedman in the keyword search. You will see that you can search the  U.S.,Freedman's Bureau Records, 1865-1878

Then to the right bottom it says U.S., Freedmen's Bureau Marriage Records 1845-1867 

Remember that the NATIONAL ARCHIVES of THE UNITED STATES is usually the original or primary source for databases.

While the other records held in the overall records can be interesting, because if you may be able to find out who a plantation owner was, I like to focus on marriages because you have twice the chance of recognizing someone as an ancestor - a bride or a groom.  This may give you the name of a female ancestor by her married and maiden name.

My first impression was that I was able to easily pull up records without knowing any particular name simply by putting in the state. I also tried common names such as Smith, Watson, or Jefferson.

The database includes many states including, according to the database:
Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. NOTE THAT WEST VIRGINIA DID NOT YET EXIST so Virginia included what is now West Virginia and South Western Pennsylvania below the Monongahela River. However, I think you will find that this does not mean ALL THE INFORMATION EVER COLLECTED IN EACH STATE but that in some way that state is represented in the collection.

We can learn from exploring the database, even if we do not have an ancestor who was enslaved or are unsure of who was.

For instance, there may be questions such as if a person lived with another (without marriage) and for how long, how they were separated (dead, forced, separated by war, sold away), and the skin color of parents, partners, and others (mulatto, black, dark, white, yellow, milk.) Unlike the census in which a census taker might make the decision to list a person's color as they see it or because of community notions, in this case the person themselves is probably reporting parents who are not in attendance. In some cases the percentage of African- Black a person was given.  The persons who are marrying may be asked how many children they had with others and you might find a comment that they 'unitedly had children.' Once in a while the name of a former partner may come up.

THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND : The records were kept where the marriage was performed.

Just as many people who are part of the LBGT community rushed to be married as soon as it was legal to, many formally enslaved people who had been partnered without marriage rushed to be married.  It is not unusual to find that a particular Minister of the Gospel married twelve couples in one day. Perhaps your research can include the name of the Minister which might lead to the name of a church, church records, even church graveyard records.

Even when the couple appear on a register, rather than an individual slip of paper or form (not standardized from one state to the next), their ages are usually listed. These are adults who were generally born twenty or more years earlier. I found one record that said both persons were "free people of color" and I wondered if that meant "last week' or 'all along.'

As well, some of these forms or handwritten documents ask where the person is from. There may be the name of a place other than where the marriage took place. But you may just find a fantastic clue that the man served in the military, and most likely that means in the CIVIL WAR on the Confederate side!  If you see a line of abbreviations such as Pot. Co. C. 60 *** where it could say the name of a town or county or plantation, that means you were just given the company/troop information. You can then find what battles they might have served in...

In my next post, I'm going to write about the Black soldiers who fought for the Confederacy.

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* (I'm aware that the bank records seem to have the Freedman spelling while the other records are in plural, Freedmen.)

ALLEN COUNTY INDIANA LIBRARY : ACPL GENEALOGY CENTER OFFERINGS : AFRICAN AMERICAN GATEWAY

ALLEN COUNTY GENEALOGY CENTER : AFRICAN AMERICAN RESEARCH 

There is a lot to find here about African Americans in the United States but the list of other countries intrigues me:

Africa Bahamas Barbados Bermuda Brazil British Isles Canada

Caribbean Cuba England Europe France Grenada Haiti

Ireland Jamaica Latin America Liberia Mexico Netherlands Norway

Oceania Philippines Sierra Leone South Africa West Africa West Indies

I clicked on Sierra Leone and discovered that some Black people were loyalists to England and can be linked to Nova Scotia. I went back and clicked on the subject of RECONSTRUCTION. Up comes a list of books that focus on the Freedman's Bureau as well as politics.

Definity explore these offerings!

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HOW DOES SHE FIND THE NAME OF THE SLAVES WHO MIGHT BE HER ANCESTORS? SHE HAS THE NAME OF THE SLAVE OWNER! (A BIT OF A TUTORIAL!)

Q

Hi AW!  I've got the name of the slave owner. How do I find the names of the slaves he owned, which I think includes a line of my ancestry?

Hannah

A 

I'm impressed Hannah; I'm going to believe you without knowing how you found the name of the slave owner, and for the purposes of this answer, for the sake of other readers of Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot, I'm going to go over some aspects of African-American genealogy research.

First, it's American research. So, do your UNITED STATES CENSUS work as far back as you can. Something I used to do all the time with microfilm, and I think we should still do in databases, is to examine the pages of the census for the surrounding area when we find a family group - just to see if there are others local who might have the same surname or be related. So forward and back, please!

The first United States census in which the freed slaves are named is 1870, which was after the Civil War. Until then people other than the head of household (Be that free or not) were counted as statistics and names were not given. But if you can find the family on the 1870 you probably already have the names of some people who were in slavery in the location. (If by chance any of your ancestors fell into the category of Free, you may be able to go back by comparing the people on the 1870 with those statistics re living in the same area and same head of household as well.)

Do the census work for the SLAVE OWNER if you find one - and any legal documents pertaining to them and their family regarding inheritance.

A caution when using databases. Often I skip the question of race or color as I think this has been subjective. I will note it, but it may not be the same answer for the same person as the decades go by.  (B - Black.  N - Negro.  M - Mulatto (mixed race). W - White.)

Check the FREEDMAN BANK RECORDS just in case. I personally have not had a whole lot of luck with these but I have once or twice had a breakthrough - because the persons had unusual and consistent names. 

My photo of part of the exhibit which is a display in a hallway.

YOU MAY WANT TO VISIT THE LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY - CENTRAL "DOWNTOWN" TO SEE A SMALL BUT WELL DONE EXHIBIT ABOUT THE FREEDMAN BANK RECORDS. It was put together by librarians from the Genealogy and Economics departments and is in a hallway.

OK so... IF YOU HAVE THE NAME OF THE SLAVE OWNER and the NAME or/and LOCATION of the farm, plantation, or place of residence for the slaves, CHECK THE LOCAL HISTORY to see if there is any mentions. Is there a biography of the slave owner, for instance? A biography might lead you to more information about the slave owner and who his or her relatives are: Wills or Bills of Sale may have more information.

Check to see if there are any genealogy groups local to that area, especially with African-American focus. (At the same time be careful to discern what "oral history" and archival documents or support documents there are.)

Check to see if there are any existing local newspapers and how far back they go, likely news that may apply will mention the slave owner.

But to be more focused on your question THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES brags that it has the largest collection relating to the African- American experience.

Also check SLAVE NARRATIVES. https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/

Excerpt: Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA). At the conclusion of the Slave Narrative project, a set of edited transcripts was assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. In 2000-2001, with major support from the Citigroup Foundation, the Library digitized the narratives from the microfilm edition and scanned from the originals 500 photographs, including more than 200 that had never been microfilmed or made publicly available. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs divisions of the Library of Congress.

I'm going to this link https://guides.loc.gov/manuscripts-illustrated-guide/african-american-history

Excerpt: The Manuscript Division has one of the nation's most valuable collections for the study of African-American history and culture. The Library's holdings include information about slavery and the slave trade as well as other aspects of plantation life. Papers of slaveholders provide one view of slavery, and slave narratives give another. Diaries and journals further illuminate lives spent in slavery and freedom. The manuscripts of black and white abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and Salmon P. Chase describe the efforts of those who attempted to alleviate the plight of slaves, and the records of the American Colonization Society detail the saga of African Americans who left the United States and established the West African nation of Liberia in the mid- nineteenth century. Papers relating to black participation and victimization in the Civil War abound, and African-American history during Reconstruction is reflected in collections pertaining to newly elected black officials such as John Mercer Langston, Blanche K. Bruce, Hiram R. Revels, and Francis L. Cardozo.

https://www.loc.gov/item/mm82057687/#:~:text=Correspondence%2C%20speeches%2C%20writings%2C%20court,during%20the%20American%20Civil%20War. This is the link to the Black History Collection. (I'm aware that Black is a preferred term these days, but for the purposes of our research we search for a collection title as it was when it came into being and we will encounter other terms we may not like as well.)

Correspondence, speeches, writings, court records, slave records, slave deeds, emancipation and manumission papers, birth and marriage records, wills, family and genealogical papers, military records, financial records, ships' papers, broadsides, newspaper clippings, printed matter, and other papers pertaining to African Americans from the colonial period through the early twenty-first century. Subjects include the slave trade, slaves, medical care of slaves, fugitive slaves, abolition, emancipation, manumission, freed persons, civil rights, political rights and suffrage, and military service, in particular, during the American Civil War.

THERE ARE OTHER COLLECTIONS AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES THAT MAY BE OF VALUE, but again, don't forget the more local resources, and that includes the small libraries in small towns and historical society collections!

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HOW TO DEAL WITH SURNAME MYSTERIES #3 THE RATHER RECENT NOTION OF SURNAMES : AFRICAN AMERICAN - BLACK

HOW TO DEAL WITH SURNAME MYSTERIES  #3  THE RATHER RECENT NOTION OF SURNAMES  :  AFRICAN AMERICAN - BLACK

Some people are telling me that using the term "Black" is now correct rather than African-American. Well....  all things being not equal...

I know that European-American is the equal of the term African-American but in the United States anyway, we have a very mixed society. I feel as if the term Black (or White) is actually general and assumes much based on a visual interpretation of someone's body. 

To learn what specific country or tribe one's ancestors left perhaps a DNA test is what to do. For today, using these tests, a person can say they are Nigerian-American... 

Using traditional genealogy, the find of archival documents, I've helped more than one person discover their American slave ancestors. But in one case we learned their Black ancestors were not slaves at all but were "People of Color" who came free and into New Orleans. 

We cannot assume that every person we encounter whose skin is of a darker shade has African roots, or if they self identify as Black, that they are of slave ancestry.  And as for Reparations, we cannot assume every person's roots were in Slave-America.

A person needs to ask themselves WHY they are doing genealogy. There are very many reasons why. If meeting people you are genetically related to is the reason, you no longer have to totally rely on documents held in archives. If you are preparing for Reparations, well I suspect a DNA test will be required plus the genealogy. 

African-American slaves...  on records in the United States, rarely are listed by names recorded in Farm Books or census. Slave Schedules on the 1850 and 1860 Federal United States Census offer statistics. But then, early census in the U.S. also only listed the head of household and statistics. Sometimes on contracts for buying or selling of slaves people are named. There has been some inference that when a White slave-owner does list the names, it is equal to recognizing those people as his genetic children. That assumption may be going too far. 

The Library of Congress has the largest collection of interest to those researching African slave ancestors. In addition, Slave Narratives, taken by writers employed by the Works Project Administration re President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, is held by many libraries. Recently on YouTube I found some RECORDED slave narratives! 

As for surnames, after liberation, some ex slaves did take the name of the slave-owner - the estate they lived on, without being genetically related to an owner...

But I think for the purposes of this post we need to go to the fact that most enslaved people did not go on record on U.S. census - and other documents - as having surnames until they were freed.  We have some incorrect notions about what happened when being free was official as well, as history and genealogy has proven this depended very much on individual situations, places and dates. We may know that slaves wanted to escape, wanted their freedom, and some managed to do this because of the Underground Railroad, but others had no idea what was next for them. Slavery was an economic system and the slave was tied financially to the slave holder, but emancipation did not always or automatically mean that the now free person was going to leave the homestead or plantation, not right away anyway. They needed to find viable employment and a place to live. To pack up and leave on foot on short notice to nowhere?

For many reasons people like to stay put. Our economic situation in large cities right now is typical.  Many people have become homeless because they can no longer afford to live where they have for years but they are not moving out of their home turf. They have no urge to leave a place they have become accustomed to, where they feel connected, where they know some people, how to get around, and where to find what they need.  

Not everyone wanted to leave a warm climate for a cold one. How do you know for sure that moving to a northern city will be a positive move? Point is, Emancipation came. The day came in which a person who never earned an income - or a viable one - but who had at least a rudimentary roof over their head, clothes on their back, and food in their stomach, was going to have to find some other way to earn money, a living, and pay for these things. Some slave owners did decide to go ahead and pay their ex-slaves or let people remain on the property. The Big Plantation existed but believe it or not most Slave Owners had only one or two and sometime the Slave lived in the house with the family.

As slaves did not have the right to property such as land or have money in a bank account until they were freed, the Freedmans Bureau created the first place for them to do that, the Freedmans Bank. Unfortunately, this bank didn't last and was only in operation for a short while.

The Freedmans Bank records I've used are rather limited, but I've found some valuable information in them because the person's name was unusual, or the person had not moved from where they had a bank account and were also on census. 

Freed people were told they could choose their own surname.

Though once enslaved, many chose the name of a President of the United States, such as Jefferson or Washington, though they were not slave owned by these men. 

THERE WAS NO LEGAL REASON WHY ANY ONE PERSON HAD TO ACCEPT OR USE a SURNAME meaning that members of the same family could choose different surnames or a person could try out a surname and decide on a different one. This is a research obstacle that one can sometimes not surmount, though I've had some great luck along with determination to find more information on people's ancestors who were once slaves. You may have to do some of the most dogged but incredibly interesting research that goes well beyond what databases can offer. 

I find that information held by churches can be valuable in this quest. Also carefully inspect death, birth, and marriage certificates for any notes that might have been made. I've found mention of a person's previous surname, not related to earlier marriage, in a few of these documents. When you find the name of a Slave-Owner or ex-Slave Owner, you may want to look for any legal documents such as land purchases and wills in order to learn more. Some of these landowners had land in more than one locality but, especially if they were rich and had many slaves, they may also be mentioned in local histories.

The African-American - Black way in contemporary times is to invent and create interesting and unusual given names, almost as if the surname is not so special. It's because of these given special names that I've been lead to some useful information. 

This post is one of a series on the subject.  Click on the tag Surname Help - AWG to get to the posts.

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FREEDMAN BANK RECORDS - USEFULNESS

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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HOW CAN I FIND MY GREAT GREAT GRANDMOTHER'S SLAVE SHIP AND PLACE OF BIRTH?

QUESTION for ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY

HOW CAN I FIND MY GREAT GREAT GREAT GRANDMOTHER'S SLAVE SHIP AND PLACE OF BIRTH IN AFRICA?

ANSWER

There is no one way this is done, when it is possible.  Learning the actual nation can be about DNA rather than following documentation as the documentation may not exist.  Slave Ship databases may help you learn about what ships went where but do not have slave names.  But in order to gather information to set you on the right path you still have to methodically go back in time and learn as much as you can about the history and culture of that time and place. Don't take wild leaps going back 100 years or more. Also expect to research around her, following her children and other relations you may have never met.

You have shown me your great great great grandmother is on the 1870 census and so let's take a good look at that census page.

Here is what I think:

First this is only five years after Emancipation and yet she is living in a farmstead with a planter and her daughter and their family where she is listed as being the mother in law of the head of household.  The value of this farmstead is such I believe that this planter did not earn a huge sum of money in five years.  I also see that the neighbors are listed as W while he and his family are listed as B.  They are not living in a B ghetto.  I believe that pre emancipation this person was free so look at the regular U.S.  census (free person's rather than slave registers) and continue backward as far as you can, to come up with a possible date of freedom.  Maybe the planter was born free.  Maybe he bought the freedom of his wife and mother in law.  If so there may be records of the transactions or court hearings.

Then there is the issue of his wife who would be a child of your GGG Grandmother.   I see based on children that they have been together for a good 10 years before Emancipation. I want you to follow her and her family forward.  I want you to see if you can get a possible death era or date for her.  Then check with the present day county of their location to find out where any possible death records might be kept.  it is possible that if the daughter lived as many years as her mother than she just might be on a civil register.  If they didn't have civil records in this time and place, perhaps church records.  You want to find the daughter's death record because it may name her parents even if it is a notation by a priest at her funeral Mass.  Likewise following the GGG Grandmother forward  you may try for a record of her death, hoping that there is familial information on it.

Obituaries are not out of the question and local Louisiana historical societies and libraries may help.

You show that on the 1870 your GGG Grandmother is listed as coming from Africa and family history is that she came into New Orleans.  You want to check New Orleans resources.  Make some phone calls and find out what they have or know that might help you.

Additionally the surname of the family group in 1870 is not the surname spelling that was brought forward.  Be sensitive to that.  I ran a Freedman's bank record check for this surname and came up with nothing.  However the English variant had many records.  My sense is that this family had no Freedman Bank account because they were already free.

Ancestry has some New Orleans slave ship manifests.

Here is the SLAVE VOYAGES (TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE SHIP DATABASE)  it lists ship names and captains.

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall (who is of Russian and Polish Jewish ancestry and a historian) is highly respected for what became a life's work and great contribution to slave research.  This is a link  about her work:

THE LOUISIANA SLAVE DATABASE AND THE LOUISIANA FREE DATABASE: NPS GOV GUIDE   (I believe this is a compact disk for purchase.)

A couple years ago another database became available from the Archdiocese of New Orleans.   ARCHIVES LOUISIANA - CATHOLIC CHURCH -BAPTISMALS SLAVE AND FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR   It begins with a note about how it was written in Spanish and to convert French names into their Spanish equivalents - or at least be sensitive that this may have happened.  Try for her daughter first since you know her birth year from the census.

GOOD LUCK!  Check in with me after you've done all this!

THE TRANS-ATLANTIC SLAVE VOYAGES SITE REVISITED - SLAVE NARRATIVES

SLAVE VOYAGES ORG - Trans-Atlantic Voyages   link

I met someone recently who corrected me for calling someone "African American."  She said I should be using the term BLACK.  I suppose BLACK works if a person appears to be "Black" and you don't really know that their origins are from Africa.  I think the whole subject is controversial and confusing.  After all, some very Black looking people, with DNA analysis, prove to be mostly European and visa versa.

Anyway, I thought I'd revisit a link I've had posted a long time and explore further.  SEARCHING THE VOYAGES, you will find THE NAME OF A SHIP, the name of the captain, the places where they picked up slaves (and no, it wasn't all from AFRICA, and where the ship is LANDING which could be Bahia or Brazil.)

What you will not find is the names of the enslaved.

YOU CAN FIND THE NAMES OF THE ONCE ENSLAVED IN TWO DATABASES.

I've found the FREEDMAN BANK RECORDS and SLAVE NARRATIVES, two different database / sites, to be more informative about individuals.  I'm able to access both at my library without fees.

AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH IS A GREAT TIME TO START YOUR AFRICAN-AMERICAN GENEALOGY RESEARCH - SOME THINGS TO LOOK FOR

You don't have to be African American to do African American history or genealogy research. Many White Americans go back a few generations and are surprised by the fact that they have an ancestor of a different race, or that someone related to them once owned slaves. Likewise, DNA projects are revealing that most African-Americans by now have some White DNA.

Besides following census and city directories and military records, here are some other documents to look for:

In 1863 when Black soldiers were recruited to serve the Union side of the Civil War, their services was documented. Look for COMPILED RECORDS FOR THE U.S. COLORED TROOPS which can take you to PENSIONS. These will include a soldier's rank, company, and regiment in the U.S.C Infantry, his pension number, and a death date in some cases. The service records can be extensive starting with enlistment places and dates.

Southerners who lost property in the Civil War sometimes made a claim for reimbursement. Look in THE SOUTHERN CLAIMS COMMISSION files. There are sometimes testimonials of great detail. This would include property owned by free persons who were once slaves.

THE FREEDMAN BANK RECORDS can also be helpful. Because freed slaves were allowed to pick their own name (first and last), and sometimes picked one and changed it again, or siblings took different surnames, and many of the records are not easily linked to a census or other record because many slaves moved, this database may not be useful to the majority. However, once in a while a researcher finds gold. Start by running the more unusual names in your family.

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