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Register of Colored Persons of Augusta County, State of Virginia, cohabiting together as Husband and Wife on 27th February 1866
After the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation in 1866 to legalize marriages of formerly enslaved men and women, freed couples registered their unions with the Freedmen's Bureau in large numbers. Agents documented their names, ages, names of…
Register of Children of Colored Persons in Augusta County, State of Virginia, whose Parents had ceased to cohabit on 27th February, 1866, which the Father recognizes to be his
After the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation in 1866 to legalize marriages of formerly enslaved men and women and to legitimate their children. In addition to registering couples, Freedmen's Bureau agents also compiled separate registers of…
Marriage License between Samuel Gravely and Delia Martin
About six weeks after Virginia's General Assembly passed legislation authorizing county clerks to issue marriage licenses to African Americans, Samuel Gravely and Delia Martin married in Henry County.
Petition of Peter Wiggins, Westmoreland County
In 1867 a former enslaved man named Peter Wiggins petitioned the Westmoreland County Court to gain custody of the two sons and two daughters he and Malinda Thompson had before the Civil War; but because Wiggins had been married to a woman named Ann…
Order to bind Katy Gillespie to Dr. William A. Gillespie
In 1866 the General Assembly authorized local overseers of the poor to "bind out," or apprentice, orphaned or homeless African American children to responsible adults to raise, educate, and provide training in some useful occupation. The Virginia…
Deed of Manumission for Lucy Goode Brooks and three children
Enslaved Richmond residents Lucy Goode Brooks and her husband Albert Royal Brooks were permitted to live together as a family. Beginning late in the 1850s, Albert Brooks paid the owner of Lucy Brooks in installments to purchase the freedom of his…
Charter and By-laws of the Friends' Asylum for Colored Orphans, in the City of Richmond, Va.
Lucy Goode Brooks solicited support from African American churches and a local meeting of the Society of Friends (Quakers) in Richmond to establish the Friends' Asylum for Colored Orphans, which the General Assembly incorporated in 1872. The charter…
We Till Our Own Fields. Detail from The Fifteenth Amendment. Celebrated May 19th, 1870
In this detail of his lithograph celebrating the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, James Carter Beard illustrated the ability that the freedpeople had to control their own labor and acquire their own land after emancipation.
Glimpses at the Freedmen-The Freedmen's Union Industrial School, Richmond, Va.
In addition to teaching freed men, women, and children to read and write, northern missionary and relief associations also established industrial schools for adults to help African Americans achieve self-sufficiency in the new free labor market.
Interior of the Seabrook Tobacco Warehouse at Richmond, Virginia
The Seabrook Warehouse did not burn in Richmond's evacuation fire and reopened in June 1865. About two-dozen freedmen were employed at the warehouse at the time.