Confiscated Property, Abandoned Lands, and Government Farms

“Manuscript Map Showing the Position of Government Farms, 1st District Negro Affairs, Department of Virginia and North Carolina”

“Created after the US Civil War, the maps in this series provide intriguing but fragmentary evidence of property ownership transfers. Few in number, these records raise more questions than they answer– a perfect invitation to intrepid researchers in search of a project.

“Each map shows numbered plots of land in red, with a key listing the name of the estate, owner or perhaps occupant for each number….The 1st District map includes the location of a “Poor House” among the listings. While the maps alone do not definitively state the farms are occupied by freedmen, outside documentation suggests this is the case (Berlin, Reidy and Miller 193-95).***

“Several maps in the series depict the  lease of captured and abandoned lands and plantations along the lower Mississippi River in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.”

Ellen Mulligan. “Map Minutes: Captured and Abandoned Property in the Post-Civil War South,” The Unwritten Record (16 March 2019)

***Berlin, Ira,  Joseph P. Reidy and Steven F. Miller. The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Upper South, Volume 2. Cambridge University Press, 1993. An excerpt of the article by Berlin etal is online.