Freemen’s Bureau Records Project Complete Thanks to FamilySearch

In conjunction with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and other organizations, FamilySearch completed a project to index and publish online images of Freedmen’s Bureau records from the United States National Archives and Records Administration. These records are pivotal for African American research because they document freed slaves and others who struggled to redefine themselves after the Civil War. Nearly 19,000 online volunteers—mostly from the United States and Canada—finished indexing the nearly two million handwritten records in June 2016—just a year and a day after the initiative started. A copy of the database was presented to the newly completed Smithsonian National Museum of African American History Culture on December 6 of this year. The digitized records are searchable on DiscoverFreedmen.org and FamilySearch.org.