After the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln and Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands to aid newly freed African-Americans. Before it closed in 1872, the bureau had provided assistance to 4-million former slaves making the transition from slavery to freedom, including people in Rockville. The county courthouse became the site of an 1866 case brought by the Montgomery County Office of the Freedmen's Bureau to recover money stolen from Rockville's African-American community. By 1858, local African-American families had raised money through subscriptions to build a church and school, and entrusted it to J. Mortimer Kilgour. After Kilgour joined the Confederate Army in 1861 and never returned to Rockville, the Freedmen's Bureau assisted local leaders Daniel Brogdon, Henson Norris, Hillary Carroll, and Solomon Williams by accusing Kilgour of theft, tracking him down, and returning some money to the Rockville Colored School Board in 1867.
