FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 19, 2012
The Freedmen’s Bureau records are the richest and most extensive source of post-Civil War and Reconstruction eras’ genealogical information for African Americans. Nearly four million slaves were emancipated during the Civil War and the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands was formed in 1865 to provide assistance. That assistance consisted of educational activities, legal assistance, issuance of rations, clothing, and medicine as well as settling freedmen on confiscated and abandoned lands. Documents available include local censuses, marriage records, educational records and medical records and include full names plus former masters and plantations. Learn how to mine these records for your family history at a Calvert Library Prince Frederick workshop on Saturday, October 13 at 10am. National Archives African American Genealogy Subject Specialist Reginald Washington will present. Registration is recommended.
Washington lectures frequently on NARA's holdings relating to African American genealogy; and over the past 12 years has spoken at the conferences of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, the National Genealogical Society, the Federation of Genealogical Societies, the National Institute on Genealogical Research, the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research, and numerous local genealogy societies and clubs. His articles have appeared in several genealogical journals and magazines, including Prologue, Ancestry, and the Bulletin Negro History Bulletin. He served for more than five years as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the National Quarterly Genealogical Quarterly. Before joining the staff of NWCC1 in 1990, Reginald served as a reference archivist in the Center for Legislative Archives (NWL), where he provided expert research service on the records of the committees of Congress. Prior to joining NWL, Reginald worked as an archives technician in the Records Declassification Division at Suitland, Maryland. Reginald began his career at NARA as a National Archives volunteer. In October 2000, Reginald gave congressional testimony in support of The Freedmen's Bureau Preservation Act of 2000. This act authorized $ 3 million for the preservation of more than 1,000 linear feet of field office records of the Freedmen's Bureau. The Freedmen's Preservation Project involved staff from a number of NARA units, and included volunteers, students, archivists, archives specialists, archives technicians, conservators, editors, five and microfilm camera operators. This five-year year initiative, completed in Fall 2006, resulted in the reproduction of more than one million images of Freedmen's Bureau field office records on more than a thousand rolls of microfilm. The Genealogical Society of Utah has started a project to digitize and index the microfilmed records. The records will eventually be placed on the Internet.
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Robyn Truslow
Public Relations Coordinator
Calvert Library
850 Costley Way
Prince Frederick, MD 20678
Phone 410-535-0291
Fax 410-535-3022
rtruslow@somd.lib.md.us
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