Today's post is written by David Pfeiffer, a reference archivist at Archives II in College Park, Maryland. There has always been public interest in railroad accident reports, especially by genealogists eager to learn the circumstances of an accident that an ancestor was involved in. The National Archives at College Park textual reference has accident report … Continue reading Know Your Records: Railroad Accident Reports
Category: Genealogy
Researching the War of 1812: Where to Begin
By T. Juliette Arai As 2012 marks the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, the Reference staff at Archives 1 want to provide a glimpse of some of the series that we have in our custody relating to this conflict. The following list may assist researchers who want to locate records pertaining to the War of 1812. Please … Continue reading Researching the War of 1812: Where to Begin
Accessing veterans’ records
One of the most frequent kinds of research requests we receive concerns gaining access to military veterans' service records. To do our part to commemorate Veterans Day tomorrow, we've asked Theresa Fitzgerald of the Archives' National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis to write a post on everything you ever wanted to know about accessing … Continue reading Accessing veterans’ records
Students Share Scholarly Research at NARA
Many of our NARA colleagues are historians and researchers themselves. In this post, written by Lopez Matthews, we have the opportunity to learn about a few current research projects our staff members are undertaking. If you'd like more information on any of these projects, leave a note in the comments and we'll make sure the … Continue reading Students Share Scholarly Research at NARA
Civil War and Later (SC) Pension Application Files Re-Boxing Preservation Project
Our guest blogger today is Dennis Edelin, Chief, Forms Section at Archives I. On September 26, 2011, the National Archives began a preservation re-boxing project. The purpose of the project is to re-box the nearly 900,000 Soldier Certificate ("SC") Civil War and Later pension application files in our custody. Please note, these records are not … Continue reading Civil War and Later (SC) Pension Application Files Re-Boxing Preservation Project
Finding My Father in the Archives
Today's post is the first in an occasional series where we will highlight some of the work of our volunteers. Janet Hodges is a volunteer with the Volunteer Office at the National Archives at College Park. First, this isn’t about genealogy; I don’t like genealogy. I leave that exercise to my daughter who enjoys spending … Continue reading Finding My Father in the Archives
The “Re-Encarnacion” of NARA’s Records
Today's post is written by Monique Politowski, an archives technician who works on the NARA/Ancestry digitization partnership project in Silver Spring, Maryland. Millions of records have been converted to digital form since the partnership between NARA and Ancestry.com began in 2008, and some of the most popular records digitized as a result of this union … Continue reading The “Re-Encarnacion” of NARA’s Records