Endorsements Sent
setName: label: See more items in
content: Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Alabama, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1870
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Museum of African American History and Culture
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NMAAHC.FB.M809, Series 5
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: Endorsements sent are characteristic of nineteenth–century record keeping practices. A reply to an incoming letter was frequently written on the letter itself or on a specially prepared wrapper. The reply, known as an endorsement, was then copied into an endorsement book, and the endorsed letter was returned to the sender or forwarded to another office. Endorsement books also usually include a summary of the incoming letter and sometimes previous endorsements that were
recorded on it.

The three volumes of endorsements sent, October 2, 1865–July 7, 1866, and April 3, 1867–July 21,1869, are arranged chronologically, and each volume contains a name index. The endorsements are cross–referenced by citations to other endorsements in the same series, to the registers of letters received, and to letters sent. The gap in the series, June 1866–April 1867, is filled by endorsements for that period among the records for the District of Alabama in Record Group 393, which are not reproduced in this publication.