Endorsements Sent and Received
setName: label: See more items in
content: Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the District of Columbia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1869
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Museum of African American History and Culture
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NMAAHC.FB.M1055, Series 2
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: According to recordkeeping practices of the day, the Assistant Commissioner kept a series of records known as endorsements sent or endorsement and memorandum books. Frequently, instead of writing a letter, the Assistant Commissioner or the Acting Assistant Adjutant General wrote the reply or forwarding statement on the incoming letter and either returned the letter to the sender or forwarded it to another office. These replies or statements were copied into the endorsement books along with summaries of the contents of the communications and frequently, any previous endorsements.

The contents of the five volumes of endorsements sent and received, June 15, 1865–August 26, 1869, are arranged and numbered in chronological order. There are name indexes to Volume 4 and 5. In the left margin of the pages in the endorsement book is the date of receipt of the incoming letter or endorsement, the name of the person or title of the officer to whom the endorsement was sent, the name of the person who wrote the endorsement, and the number assigned at the time of receipt. Some endorsements are continued on subsequent pages. For example, endorsement 655 in the first volume of the series contains the notation "To E. B. Volume 1, No. 735," which indicates that subsequent endorsements to the same correspondence in the same volume are Numbered 735. The endorsement book contain the same cross–reference symbols to related records as those used in the volumes of letters sent.