Registers of Letters Received and Endorsements Sent
setName: label: See more items in
content: Records of the Superintendent of Education for the State of Tennessee, 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.M1000, Series 3
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: According to the record–keeping practices of the 19th–century, incoming communications were entered in registers of letters received. In addition to a summary of the contents of the incoming letter, the registers usually include such identifying information as the name and sometimes the office of the writer, the date of receipt, the date of communication, the place from which it was written, and the entry number assigned. Endorsements sent are also characteristics of 19th–century record–keeping practices. A reply to an incoming letters was frequently written on the letter itself or on a specially prepared wrapper. The reply, termed an endorsement, was then copied into an endorsement book (or, in this case, a register of letters received), and the endorsed letter was returned to the sender or forwarded to another office.

Entries in the two volumes of registers of letters received and endorsement sent, September 1, 1866–July 20, 1870, are arranged and numbered by date of receipt. There are two numerical sequences, the first for the period September 1866–December 1869 and the second for the period January–July 1870. There is a separate name index volume covering both registers. The numbers in the index refer to both page and entry numbers.

A number of documents entered in the registers are no longer to be found among the series of registered letters received. Most of the missing letters were forwarded to another office or returned to the sender. The National Archives and Records Services (NARS) staff has placed an asterisk near the writer's name in the register for each letter that is still present in the registered series. School reports from the subordinate officers and teachers were entered in the registers as correspondence, but only the letter of transmittal was filed with the letters received; the actual reports were filed in separate series that have been reproduced on Rolls 6 – 9 of this microfilm publication.