Compiled military service records at the National Archives for the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) through the Philippine Insurrection (1899-1902) are filed in separate envelopes or jackets that contain basic information about the soldier.  The example shown here for my ancestor Adam Dale (his surname is actually DEAL, which shows how spelling mistakes/variations can find their way [...]

We wanted to share a few pictures from a recent awards ceremony in Congress, where Chairman Clay was presented with a Duke Ellington Public Domain Merit Badge today by Public Resource.org for grassroots efforts on making NARA’s resources available to everyone. Take a look, and if you have your own suggestions for how we can [...]

Trying to find the War Department decimal classification number for the Maritime Labor Board or the Department of State’s decimal classification number for extradition treaties?  We have scanned some of the filing manuals which our researchers use most frequently and posted them in the researcher section of Archives.gov.  Included are filing manuals from the War Department, the [...]

If you’ve been watching the new NBC show, Who Do You Think You Are?, you may have seen a recent episode where slavery in America was discussed. Researchers with slave ancestors often have trouble because there just aren’t a lot of federal records which list slaves by name. One type of federal record that researchers [...]

The National Records Management Program’s RACO blog, which paved the way for all other National Archives social media projects back in the spring of 2009 has been reborn as Records Express, the official blog of the National Records Management Program (NRMP) at the National Archives! The new blog will be a forum for all things [...]

Please join us for our monthly researcher meeting on Friday, March 19th, at 1 PM in the auditorium at Archives II in College Park. Jim Hastings, the Director of Access Programs, and Diane Dimkoff, the Director of the Customer Services Division, will be on hand to discuss the following questions and topics: 1. Digitization a. [...]

Immigration records at the National Archives contain more than just information about passengers traveling into the United States from foreign ports.  Quite often they also include accompanying lists of crewmen, both American and foreign-born, who worked on the vessels.  These lists exist because of an early 19th-century law that required the masters of American vessels [...]

The National Archives at New York City is moving to the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House at One Bowling Green in New York City in the fall of 2011. The new space will enable us to continue to provide the same great service and access to our records while also allowing us to expand our [...]

The National Archives in the DC area has a lot of public programs. One of our most successful ventures is our Know Your Records lecture series. We present weekly lectures, both at the National Archives Building and the National Archives in College Park, on a wide variety of research topics. A year and a half [...]

Please join us on March 19th at 1 PM at Archives II in College Park (room TBD) for the first of a new series of monthly researcher meetings. Continuing the tradition of our Archives I Users Group, we will be holding monthly meetings with researchers to keep you informed of what is happening at Archives [...]