The Freedman’s Bureau Project is set to bring millions of African-Americans face-to-face with their ancestry.
According to the Huffington Post, the organization will take hundreds of hand-written records gathered by the Freedmen’s Bureau office and make them digital. According to William Pretzer, the senior history curator at the Smithsonian Museum, the office was a place for former slaves to report abusive slave masters, reunite with lost family members and have marriages officiated.
“In that process, they took down names — full names — and relationships,” Pretzer said. “Those are the first time before the 1870 census in which those full names and relationships are recorded in any central place.”
The exciting project will now give African-Americans the opportunity to not only explore their roots but discover other living relatives as well. Learn more about the new initiative here.
Is it important to you to learn about your lineage? How useful do you think this new information will be? Let us know below.
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