Thought some on the List serve could use this, Sheila March 5, 2001 Bank records may help black residents of Miss. trace roots By Sherri Williams Clarion-Ledger Staff Writer A thick, rusted door at Yesterday's Treasures antique shop in Vicksburg today guards scrap wood in a cove-shaped room that once held freed slaves' dreams.Nestled in the historic district of the river city still stands the original home of the Vicksburg branch of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Co., a national bank system established by Congress in 1865 to assist freed slaves in becoming financially stable after years of unpaid labor.Brenda Benway, who now owns the building at Grove and Washington streets where the bank operated, said she is in awe of the building, which still has two vaults intact. "The South did not have much anyway after the war and to have a black bank while everyone was still dealing with the slavery issue is amazing," she said.The Freedman's Bank had 37 branch offices in 17 states, with Mississippi branches in Vicksburg, Natchez and Columbus.The bank had deposits of more than $57 million before it failed in 1874 because of poor management and fraud. Last week, a computerized database of the bank records containing 480,000 names was released.The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormons, spent 11 years, with help from volunteer Utah state inmates, organizing the records which contain the name, age and occupation of the account holder and their skin tone, and the names of their children, siblings and parents.Early bank records also contain the name of the person who had owned the former slave. The records had been on microfilm at the National Archives and Records Administration. However, the compact disk makes the information more accessible. Mimi Miller, director of education and preservation for the Historic Natchez Foundation, said the bank's records are an invaluable historical treasure that can be used to assist African Americans in tracing their ancestry."African-American genealogy is very difficult because the first census that listed them as individuals is the 1870 census," she said. "So when you start trying to go back beyond that it's very difficult to research the history of people who were in bondage."The bank registers could be the most important link to black Mississippians seeking to mend severed roots of their family trees."Mississippi has one of the largest native-born populations in the Union and I would not be surprised if 85 or 90 percent of the black Natchez population were people who had ancestors who lived here in the 19th century," she said. "Having the information, in particular about who the owner was, helps a lot. What a wonderful document these bank records are providing."Gordon Cotton, curator of the Old Court House Museum in Vicksburg, said the existence of the bank records may be more accurate that other documents used in genealogical research because they contain specific information about emancipated blacks and their families."Before the war there were wills that were left and if plantation owners died the slaves were listed in wills," he said. "And most of the slaves did not have last names. A lot of people are listed in this register so at least there is an anchor here that you can latch on to."While the bank records provide vital historical information they also helped to foster economic empowerment among blacks, Miller said. "It had a tremendous impact. There were people who were living on property owned by others," she said. "In Natchez we have one Woodlawn neighborhood, and development began right at the end of the Civil War. "And it gave the opportunity for many African Americans to own their own homes. The evidence of the Freedman's Bank is evident in Natchez today. The Woodlawn neighborhood is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and many of those houses were financed by the Freedman's Bank."The building where the bank had operated stands at the heart of the city's commercial district on the corner of Main and Commerce streets. Ollye Shirley, chairman of the board of directors of the state's only minority owned and controlled bank, First American, said the demise of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Co. was probably financially devastating. "I can imagine that people were limited in the banks that they could go to and the closing probably ended most careers for African Americans in terms of ownership of anything."There's a group of people who had been enslaved so I am sure they knew nothing of how to manage money. It's extremely important and it's a real lesson for people today. We have a lot more than they had then. But we probably don't use it as wisely as they did."