Letters 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 4
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: The letters received by the Assistant Commissioner are in two series: registered letters received, September 1865–August 1869, are arranged and numbered in the order in which they were entered in the registers. The file citation on each letter indicates the number of the volume in which the letter was registered, the page on which it was entered, and the entry number assigned at the time of receipt. The unregistered letters received, May 1865–March 1869, are arranged chronologically. The NARS staff prepared a name index to these letters, and it is filmed immediately before the letters. A number of the unregistered letters contain file citations, most of which were assigned by previous offices of receipt. A few appear to have been assigned by the Assistant Commissioner's Office, but the corresponding entries have not been located in the register of letters received.

Most of the items in both the registered and unregistered series of letters received were sent by local superintendents and agents and concern the restitution of property confiscated from local inhabitants, rental of buildings for Bureau activities, assaults and outrages upon freedmen, and procurement of homes and employment of freedmen in the North. The registered series also includes reports received from staff and field officers, mostly special reports on specific incidents.