Register of Colored Persons of Augusta County, State of Virginia, cohabiting together as Husband and Wife on 27th February 1866

08_0613_01 Register Augusta.JPG

Dublin Core

Title

Register of Colored Persons of Augusta County, State of Virginia, cohabiting together as Husband and Wife on 27th February 1866

Subject

African Americans, slavery, marriage, family

Description

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 their former owners, and the length of time they had cohabitated as husband and wife, sometimes as long as ten or twenty years. Cohabitation registers document the fact that long marriages and two-parent households had been common under slavery. The Freedmen's Bureau also registered any children living with the couples, making the children legally legitimate and eligible to inherit property.

Source

Register of Colored Persons of Augusta County, State of Virginia, cohabiting together as Husband and Wife on 27th February 1866, Augusta County Court Records, Local Government Records Collection, Library of Virginia.

Date

1866

Contributor

Library of Virginia

Rights

CC BY-SA

Relation

Cohabitation Registers: Digital Collection

Format

JPG

Type

Printed form and manuscript

Identifier

08_0613_01 Register Augusta

Coverage

Augusta County, Virginia

Citation

“Register of Colored Persons of Augusta County, State of Virginia, cohabiting together as Husband and Wife on 27th February 1866,” Remaking Virginia: Transformation Through Emancipation, accessed March 28, 2024, https://www.virginiamemory.com/online-exhibitions/items/show/518.