Today in celebration of the Juneteenth, there was a special news event announcing the Freedmen's Bureau Project. Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. Specifically it dates back to 1865. It was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. This was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. It was the end of southern resistance to President Lincoln’s proclamation. It is a Holiday in Texas commemorated every year.
If you do not have a good understanding of what the African American Freedmen's Bureau Records are the FamilySearch Wiki page will give you a greater understanding of what records are involved. At the end of the page are some great links to give you further information.
FamilySearch International, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS), and the California African American Museum are partnering to make the images available, and free for anyone to view and search. The main focus at present is for volunteer indexers to join the effort to get the records indexed in record time. Would you like to help? Go to the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS) website and click on the image of Juneteenth, or go to The Freedmen’s Bureau Project and click on the volunteer now button.
This comes at a time that the United States needs a healing element of love. The gift of volunteering to make these records searchable will be just that a labor of love. All help will be greatly appreciated,
See you next month.
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| Reproduction of the Emancipation Proclamation at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio from Wikipedia |
FamilySearch International, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS), and the California African American Museum are partnering to make the images available, and free for anyone to view and search. The main focus at present is for volunteer indexers to join the effort to get the records indexed in record time. Would you like to help? Go to the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS) website and click on the image of Juneteenth, or go to The Freedmen’s Bureau Project and click on the volunteer now button.
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| Volunteer Now page for the project. |
This comes at a time that the United States needs a healing element of love. The gift of volunteering to make these records searchable will be just that a labor of love. All help will be greatly appreciated,
See you next month.
