Highlight: Federal Research Tools

The Library of Congress: African American Family and Related Works in the Library of Congress/ Washington 1998 / Research Guide No. 34
http://www.loc.gov/rr/genealogy/bib_guid/aframer/afrahome.html
Between 1973 and 1997, the Library of Congress compiled a catalog of 183 books that referenced topics ranging from abolitionists, masters and slaves, freedmen, Civil War soldiers, and Cherokee Indians in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Books range from published family histories to funeral programs to an index of an African American genealogical journal (1980 – 1990) to African American genealogical resource guides. The links are listed in alphabetical order by family name or author name. The linked pages provide a bibliographic listing of the books along with the Library of Congress’ call numbers of each book.



National Archives: Black Family Research: Using the Records of Post-Civil War Federal Agencies at the National Archives
www.archives.gov/publications/ref-info-papers/108/index.html
This page is intended to provide researchers with a guide for efficiently and effectively using the National Archives and Records Administration for African American genealogical research in order to locate ancestor names in federal records from just after the Civil War. Many of these resources are from The Freedman’s Bureau, which was a federally initiative that aimed to help newly freed slaves establish bank accounts in order to help them gain the beginnings of financial freedom. This page defines and describes the National Archive’s holdings in terms of resources such as indexes of deposit ledgers, field office records, southern claims case files, and registers of signatures of deposit just to name a few. This page reports that some records are not available on microfilm, namely ledgers, journals and specific kinds of letters. This page also lists other related records that will help researchers find names and activities of their ancestors. Toward the end of the page, there is advice on how to actually search the documents once the researcher arrives at the National Archives as well as National Archives contact information and suggestions for further reading.