Education • 288 Records • Uploaded August 25, 2023 • Data Website: nmaahc.si.edu
This source contains correspondence from agents and administrators of the Freedmen's Bureau requesting assistance for schools on Maryland's Eastern Shore and in Delaware. The records are dated from 1869 to 1870 and provide accounts about the development and maintenance of Black schools as reported by local community members. Reports range in subject, from requests for lumber and funding to applications for a teaching position. Many of the reports were written by Black individuals like John H. Butler, Henry Augustus Monroe, and George Handy whose activities were fundamental to establishing the schools that would educate communities across the Eastern Shore. In March of 1865 the War Department established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, known as the Freedmen’s Bureau. While Freedmen Bureau's activity on the Delmarva Peninsula was primarily administered through the Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia office, the educational efforts were administered through the District of Columbia office. These letters are housed at the National Archives and made accessible through microfilm, Family Search, and as a [Smithsonian Institute NMAAHC digital] collection(https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/freedmens-bureau). Transcriptions of letters were generated by digital volunteers of the Smithsonian Institute Transcription Center. Complete records of the correspondence can be found in these collections.
The list below shows the data fields included in this source. If a field is marked as Indexed, it is searchable.