African American people looking ancestors in the Dawes rolls

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Dawes Roll number.

rencherkristina1

work in a Family History Center and am having more and more African

American people looking ancestors in the Dawes rolls. How do i find these resources? Where do i even begin looking for the Dawes Rolls?

Gordon Collett

I know nothing about these. When I find myself in such a situation, the FamilySearch Wiki is usually the best place to start. Here is the article in the Wiki about the Dawes Commission Enrollment Records: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Dawes_Commission_Enrollment_Records . Looks like a good place for you to begin.

Next place to go is Google. Looks like you can spend a couple of days on just the first page of results when you search for Dawes Rolls.

For your particular requests for help, start here: https://www.okhistory.org/learn/freedmen

Mark McKenzie_1

@rencherkristina1 I work with these types of records quite a bit of late and here are a few things…

The Dawes records relating to the enslaved persons of tribal members are identified separately and referred to as Freedmen [much like enslaved persons of white owners]

There are three general record types you'll be looking for...

Enrollment Cards

Applications for Enrollment

Applications for Allotment [Land]

The title of the film roll will be something along these lines

A key item you should be looking for is the APPROVED enrollment number for an individual. This will pay big dividends in Full Text Search and the number can be included in any FTS query. In this example the Dawes Number for Willis Daniels [Line 5] is 317. [btw make note of the Field Card Number; In this case 252. You may need that later…]

The Oklahoma Historical Society has a search engine which is helpful to confirm these numbers as sometimes you may find several numbers associated with an individual. In this case we can confirm that 317 number for Willis is his approved enrollment number

One tricky part is that when looking for the Application records is that they are found in a folder which is labeled by the Enrollment Card number and not the Approved enrollment number.

Another note... be sure to carefully review any annotations to the Enrollment Card [see the earlier example] as they often provide many clues to other cards/records, and can occasionally provide other details such as spouses and death information. And unlike other enrollment cards the Freedmen cards are two sided and provide additional details on the back [subsequent image]. Along with relations these card also identify the tribal member slave owner

Because of the land allotments, it is quite incredible what you can find with Full Text search as there are many probate, deed, and other legal records not otherwise easily found. The combined use of keywords and the Enrollment number really pays off

When adding Sources to a profile, when you have it, be sure to include the Roll Number as one of the facts saved. Really helps to have that 'handy'

Ancestry has a pretty good set of search engines to query their holdings.

Anyway, hope that's enough to get you started

Mark McKenzie_1

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