After freedom came, for a brief and precious time, someone wrote our names down. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands kept labor contracts, marriage and cohabitation records, ration rolls, letters, and school registers — and in them, people who had been invisible in the old records appear at last as themselves. In this sitting I show you what the Bureau left behind, where it survives today, and how to read it. These records are uneven, scattered, incomplete — the work of overwhelmed clerks in a hard season. But for many seekers, they are the bridge across 1870, and the first time an ancestor is called by name.

Resources for this episode:

• National Archives (free) — archives.gov — Freedmen's Bureau records, Record Group 105.
• FamilySea ...