Endorsements Sent
setName: label: See more items in
content: Records of the Superintendent of Education for the State of Louisiana, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1864-1869.
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content: Records of the Superintendent of Education for the State of Louisiana, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1864-1869. / Series 1: General Correspondence
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Museum of African American History and Culture
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NMAAHC.FB.M1026, Subseries 1.2
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: Endorsements sent are a characteristic of 19th-century recordkeeping 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 usually contain summaries of incoming letters and sometimes include the text of previous endorsements that were written on the letter. 

The records of the Superintendent of Education include one volume of endorsements sent, August 26, 1865-June 16, 1868, arranged and numbered by date of endorsement. The number sequence begins anew for each year except 1867. Names of correspondents and persons mentioned in the correspondence are listed in the margins. Also in the margins of some pages are numbers written as fractions. The numerator is the volume page number on which the preceding endorsement to the same addressee appears; the denominator is the page number on which a subsequent endorsement to the same addressee appears. 

Some entries in the endorsement book include a synopsis of the letter received on which the endorsement was written, others only a file citation to a letter that is no longer extant. 

The name index (part of the volume) to addressees and to persons mentioned in the endorsements, compiled from the names in the margins of each page of the endorsement book, is arranged alphabetically by initial letter of surname and thereunder by year. For the years 1865 and 1866, the number after the name in the index refers to the number of the endorsement; for the years 1867 and 1868, the number after the name refers to the page on which the endorsement us copied.