Freedmen's Bureau Records with Thom Reed

Thom Reed, Senior Marketing Manager at FamilySearch International, joins Jane today to talk about the Freedmen's Bureau records and the recently launched database and digital images for the records on FamilySearch. Thom will discuss the history of the Bureau of Refugees, Freemen, and Abandoned Lands a.k.a. Freedmen's Bureau which was established in March 1865: explain why the Bureau was established, tell what types of records were created, what types of information can be found in the records, and who used the services of the Bureau. He'll explain how to use the database to find both blacks and whites who were recorded in these records from 1865 to 1868. He'll also share some stories of finding ancestors in the database.

The Freedmen's Bureau database: http://www.discoverfreedmen.org/

Photos from www.discoverfreedmen.org

School students

Widow's pension

Colored census

Freed familiy on a plantation

Ration application