Registers of Letters Received
setName: label: See more items in
content: Records of the Superintendent of Education for the State of North Carolina 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.M844, Series 3
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: According to the recordkeeping practices of the day, incoming communications were entered in registers of letters received. The entries in the registers usually give the date of the letter, the place of origin, the date of receipt of the letter, the author, an abstract of the contents, and the number of the register entry.  

The entries in the four volumes of registers of letters received, June 1867–July 1869, are, with exception of the first register, arranged alphabetically by initial letter of surname or office of correspondent and thereunder chronologically. They are numbered in a separate numerical sequence for each letter of each volume. Entries in the first register, on the other hand, are in chronological order with letters and numbers added to provide an alphabetical and chronological system resembling succeeding volumes. Thus "W3" indicates the third letter received from persons with last names beginning with the letter "W." 

The registers contain notations or references to related records. These related records may be found by referring to the notations "L" or "LB," which direct the reader to the volumes of letters sent, and "EB," which stands for "Endorsement Book." Some endorsements, written either by the Superintendent of Education or by officers forwarding the communications to him, have been copied into the first register. Entries of letters received by the Assistant Commissioner for the period January–April 1869 are entered in the last register as well as entries March–June 1869 filmed as M843, Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of North Carolina, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1870. Name indexes, compiled by the National Archives, appear at the beginning of each volume. The index for the last register indexes only the letters received by the Superintendent of Education.

Not all letters entered in the registers are among the series of letters received by the Superintendent of Education. Some letters were forwarded to the Assistant Commissioner or the Bureau headquarters a Washington, and others were returned to the sender. In the first three registers, the National Archives has placed an asterisk (*) by the entry number of letters that remain among the letters received. In the last register, a double asterisk (**) indicates those letters still on file received by the Superintendent of Education, while the single asterisk indicates those filed with letters of the Assistant Commissioner.