Recording - First Freedoms: Freedmen's Bureau

First Freedom: Freedmen’s Bureau

Webinar took place, July 6, 2021

Feeling apprehensive about searching for ancestors in the mostly unindexed Freedmen’s Bureau records? This webinar will provide you with the steps needed to create a research plan and instructions on how to access this collection for free online.

Are you searching for ancestors living in the former Confederate states, Border states, or Washington, D. C. during the Reconstruction Era, 1863 – 1877?

The Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands will benefit your research. These records document Freedmen taking advantage of their “first freedoms,” such as legalizing marriages, agreeing to contracts, securing rations, receiving an education, and fighting for justice. White refugees are also documented receiving assistance, taking oaths of allegiance, and accessing confiscated lands. Burned counties may benefit, providing records unavailable elsewhere. Students will gain techniques for researching this mostly unindexed collection.

This webinar recording will answer these questions:

• Why and where the Freedmen’s Bureau was established
• What types of documents were created?
• How to access and search the Freedmen’s Bureau Records?
• How to use in these records in your body of research?
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About the instructor:

Shamele Jordon is a professional genealogist, producer, writer, and lecturer. Her biographical highlights include: award winning TV producer of Genealogy Quick Start; 2018 Best Independent Producer, Instructional/Training, presented by Alliance for Community Media; 2017 Learning Award Cammy presented by PhillyCAM, Philadelphia’s public access station; 2019 Lawnside Education Foundation honoree; researcher for the PBS series Oprah’s Roots: African American Lives I and II; NJ State Library grant recipient, researching Civil War Burials in Lawnside, NJ; board member and faculty at the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research, University of Athens, Ga, former president of the African American Genealogy Group in Philadelphia, workshop volunteer at the Family History Center in Cherry Hill, NJ.