Received and Retained Reports Relating to Rations, Lands, and Bureau Personnel
setName: label: See more items in
content: Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Texas Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1869
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content: Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Texas Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1869 / Series 7: Reports
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Museum of African American History and Culture
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NMAAHC.FB.M821, Subseries 7.2
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: The received and retained reports relating to rations, lands, and Bureau personnel, October 1865–April 1869, are arranged chronologically by month and thereunder by type of report. The received reports came from subassistant commissioners in the field offices and consist primarily of monthly reports of rations, clothing, and medicines issued to freedmen and refugees, and monthly reports of abandoned and confiscated lands. Both types of reports were usually statistical and were submitted on Bureau forms. The reports of rations, clothing, and medicines required information by type and sex of recipient and also data on the value of rations, medicines, and quartermaster stores issued. The land reports required such information as the name of the former owner, location boundaries and acreage of land, whether the property was abandoned or confiscated, and types of buildings, if any, on the property.

For most months there are relatively few field office reports on file because there was presumably no information to relate. Negative reports, however, were also submitted on blank forms or in simple narrative statements. The few reports for 1865 are narrative and varied in nature, including a report dated December 1, 1865, concerning an inspection of part of the Eastern District of Texas by Surgeon–in–Chief S. J. W. Mintzer.

Retained copies of monthly reports that the Assistant Commissioner forwarded to Bureau headquarters in Washington are on file beginning with January 1866; they include reports of rations, clothing, and medicines, and also reports of abandoned and confiscated lands. These reports were identical in nature to the field office reports from which they were evidently compiled. In addition, the reports generally include printed rosters of Bureau personnel (similar to those transcribed in the volume reproduced on roll 19), reports of changes of officers and agents (January 1866–July 1868), and reports of civilian agents and clerks on duty with the Bureau in Texas (July 1867–July 1868).