Record guide

Freedmen's Bureau records

Freedmen's Bureau records, 1865 to 1872, include labor contracts, marriage records, relief lists and letters that name formerly enslaved people and their families.

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually called the Freedmen's Bureau, was set up in the War Department by an act of Congress on March 3, 1865. Its task was to help people freed from slavery, and refugees, through the years right after the Civil War. Most of its work took place from June 1865 to December 1868, and it was abolished in 1872.

For African American family history the Bureau's records matter for a simple reason. Federal censuses through 1860 counted enslaved people only as numbers under an enslaver's name. Bureau records, written in 1865 and after, often give freedpeople's full names, where they lived, and sometimes the name of a former owner or plantation. They can bridge the gap between slavery and the 1870 census.

What the Bureau did

The National Archives lists the Bureau's main work: issuing rations and clothing, running hospitals and refugee camps, supervising labor contracts between planters and freedpeople, handling apprenticeship disputes and complaints, helping benevolent societies set up schools, helping legalize marriages made during slavery, and providing transportation to people trying to reunite with family or move elsewhere. Beginning in 1866 it also filed claims for back pay, bounties and pensions for Black soldiers and sailors and their heirs, work that passed in 1872 to the Freedmen's Branch of the Adjutant General's Office. Roughly 179,000 Black men served as soldiers in the Union Army, managed by the Bureau of Colored Troops set up in May 1863, so a claim can lead you to a U.S.C.T. service record.

The Bureau had a commissioner in Washington, an assistant commissioner for each state or district, and officers in local field offices. The local offices dealt with people face to face, so their records are the richest for names.

Labor contracts

After emancipation, Bureau officers witnessed and supervised written contracts between freedpeople and employers, often landowners. A contract names the employer and the workers and sets out the terms. In one Kentucky contract of January 1866 published by the National Archives, the employer promises quarters, fuel, substantial and healthy rations, and a monthly amount set opposite the worker's name. A contract with several workers may list members of one family together and place them on a particular farm or plantation.

The National Archives notes that collected labor contracts are among the state and field office records that can give detailed information on individuals. Read the whole document, including any list of workers at the end.

Marriage records

Marriage was a legal right denied to enslaved people. After the war, many couples who had lived together as husband and wife for years had their marriages formally recorded. The Bureau's headquarters marriage records, collected from 1861 through 1869 first by the Union Army and then by Bureau field offices, include marriage certificates, licenses, monthly reports of marriages and other proofs of marriage. What survives differs from state to state.

A single certificate can carry a family back into slavery. One example published by the National Archives, from April 1866, records that a couple had been living together as man and wife for about fifteen years and then lists their children. Some states also kept their own registers: Virginia's cohabitation registers, created by the Freedmen's Bureau, record couples whose marriages a Virginia law of February 1866 recognized.

Relief, ration and hospital records

Many freedpeople left slavery with very little. The Bureau's records of relief include applications, reports of food and clothing given out, relief rolls, and registers kept at camps and hospitals. Earlier registers from wartime camps and home colonies, kept by army superintendents of freedmen before the Bureau existed, can give names and ages of workers and sometimes the names and addresses of former owners.

These records were made to account for supplies, not to document families, so a person may appear only by name, age and place. Still, a name on a ration list or hospital register in a particular county and month is a firm point to build on, and it can lead you to other records of the same field office.

Letters, complaints and local censuses

Field office letters and registers of complaints record freedpeople's own words: disputes over unpaid wages, forced apprenticeship of children, violence, requests for schools and land, and searches for lost relatives. A letter to a Bureau officer can name relatives separated long before; one published by the National Archives, from 1867, is a man's plea for news of sisters he had not heard from in twenty-four years.

Some offices also made local censuses of freedpeople. The National Archives shows one from Huntsville and Athens, Arkansas, about 1865, listing name, age, sex, street, former owner, occupation and county. When records name a former owner, follow that lead into the owner's estate, deed and court records, where earlier generations may appear.

On the page, look for

Find the county where the family lived in 1865 to 1868, then the Bureau field office that served it.
Note the state, field office, microfilm number, record type and date for every find.
On a labor contract, copy the employer, every worker named, ages, terms and the plantation or farm.
On a marriage record, copy both names, how long they had lived together, and every child listed.
On a relief or hospital register, copy name, age, date and place.
Write down any former owner named, exactly as given.
Search the 1870 census in the same county for the same names.

Where to see them for free

FamilySearch, which provides digital access to the Bureau's records, arranged by National Archives microfilm publication and state; the National Archives notes that viewing some images there may be restricted. FamilySearch is free with an account.
The National Archives Catalog, where the Bureau's records are described as Record Group 105, by state and series.
National Archives microfilm, available to view at the National Archives Building in Washington, DC and at regional archives. Field office records are filmed by state, for example M1913 for Virginia and M1911 for Tennessee.
State archives for related state records, such as Virginia cohabitation registers.

Sources

How to cite this page

Daily Ancestor. "Freedmen's Bureau records." Record guides. https://dailyancestor.com/records/freedmens-bureau. Last checked 2026-10-01.