Records Relating to Transportation
setName: label: See more items in
content: Records of the Assistant Commissioner 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.M843, Series 12
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: One of the activities of the Bureau was to furnish transportation to freedmen who could find jobs in places other than where they lived. A series of contracts and related records, arranged as case files, document much of the process by which large groups of freedmen in 1867 contracted to work in States other than North Carolina. Included are contracts between prospective workers and employers, correspondence between the Bureau officials and those wishing to make contracts with freedmen, and legal documents. The records indicate that large groups of freedmen who made contracts were transported at Bureau expense to such States as Tennessee, Mississippi, and Texas where they worked on plantations.

Following this series of records, two short series are filmed—one of transportation order receipts authorized and signed by officials of the Bureau for travel, mainly in North Carolina, January 1867–December 1868, and a series of transportation orders, November 1866–February 1868, which authorized travel for officials of the Bureau and freedmen. Each series is arranged by order number and date.