Today’s post comes from guest blogger Doug Remley, who is a student research room technician in Research Services (RD-DC) at the National Archives Building in Washington, DC.  Doug offers a history lesson on how the Census Bureau celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  Future posts will include some of the unique findings [...]

In this post I’d like to highlight a particular set of records that probably don’t get as much attention as they deserve: certificates of discharge for Regular Army soldiers from the War of 1812.  The most likely reason for the slight attention these wonderful records receive is likely the fact that only a small portion [...]

June 18, 2012–the anniversary of the U.S. declaration of war against Great Britain–marked the official start of the bicentennial of the War of 1812.  To help celebrate that anniversary and bring attention to one of America’s lesser known conflicts, let’s take a look at some of the records of that war, starting with an essential [...]

Due to popular demand, we’re offering additional 1940 Census workshops at the National Archives Building in DC next week. Join us every day at 3 pm in Room G-25. We’ll discuss various ways you can get started with the 1940 Census. Each session will be approximately 30 minutes long. Monday April 9 3:00 pm: Tips [...]

Here is another entry from guest blogger Diane Petro, Archives Technician in the Archives I Research Support Branch (RD-DC), Research Services, Archival Operations – Washington, DC.  Diane helps staff the research rooms at the National Archives Building and has also been working on reference activities relating to the upcoming 1940 Census release. Time is moving [...]

With the growing hype surrounding the upcoming release of the 1940 Census, it has come to the attention of Archives staff that some misinformation may be starting to appear regarding what type of information you will find in the census and how it will be searchable.  One such tidbit that recently showed up online alleged [...]

This week’s post comes once again from guest blogger Diane Petro, who is an Archives Technician in the Archives I Research Support Branch (RD-DC), Research Services, Archival Operations – Washington, DC.  Diane helps staff the research rooms at the National Archives Building and has also been working on reference activities relating to the upcoming 1940 [...]

Now that we established the difference between Public and Private Land States in my previous post, let’s take a look at the different search paths to locate information about Public Land patents.  The main point to discern is whether you are dealing with an Eastern or Western public land state, because the relevant records are [...]

This week’s blog post comes once again from guest blogger Diane Petro, Archives Technician in the Research Support Branch at the National Archives Building in Washington, DC.  Diane is working on reference activities relating to the upcoming 1940 census release. Researchers often go to the Instructions to the Enumerator when trying to interpret a question [...]

In a previous blog post I mentioned how veterans could acquire homesteads via bounty land warrants they received as a benefit for military service.  Since then, I’ve been thinking it would be worthwhile to offer some general advice about land records at the National Archives, and more importantly to explain the distinction between public and private [...]