Vital records are the foundation and building blocks of your family history research. These are the records of life: birth, marriage, and death. At the very least, for everyone you find in your ancestry, you need the time and place of the birth, marriage (if applicable), and death. But genealogy can also be about family history: What were the times like? What important historical events affected your ancestor?

Other important records are naturalization, census records, and land ownership. Other milestones in life can also be included in your genealogy data: baptism, bar/bat mitzvah, graduation, divorce, and so on. More and more, you can find at least clues to these records online; in some cases, you can get digitized versions of the records themselves. Historical documents, such as censuses, diaries, wills, court cases, and government publications, can put flesh on the bones of our ancestors, at least in our imaginations, when they mention individuals.

Such records are usually stored in some form at archives and libraries. In this chapter, you’ll learn that some things can be found online, while others can be ordered online, and still others you have to visit in person or ask for by mail, but you might be able to print the form you need from an Internet site.

Among the best of the online sites maintained by the U.S. federal government are the Library of Congress (LOC) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Both the LOC and NARA sites have been revamped recently, with links to genealogy guides, tips, and resources gathered together for easy access. You’ll find these sites useful to help you decide what to ask for by mail or if you should visit in person.

Other important federal records online are the Bureau of Land Management records of original land grants and patents, immigration records, and naturalization records. Some states and counties also have certain vital records and censuses—sometimes online and sometimes just the contact information for ordering a copy.

This chapter gives you a short overview of what’s where and how to access the resources of these sites. Most of the examples I give pertain to finding American records; however, vital records are available in many countries, and Chapter 15 will deal with that.

Vital Records

In the United States, most birth, adoption, death, divorce, and marriage records will be at the state level, although some counties may also have copies. Usually, you have to write to the organization that has the records and enclose a check to get a certified copy. You need to have a date and a place to go with a name in order to find where an ancestor’s vital records are. In rare cases, you can find the actual document online, unless it is more than a century old and some volunteer group has scanned or transcribed it to be uploaded to the Internet. Furthermore, as discussed in Chapter 1, many professional genealogists insist on a certified copy, if not the original document itself, for proof of genealogy.

To get a certified copy of any of these records, write or go to the vital statistics office in the state or area where the event occurred. Addresses and fees are often found online at the state’s website. Usually, a fee for each document will cover copying and mailing. Each time you request a record, include a check or money order payable to the correct office and in the correct amount for the number of copies requested; sometimes, a credit card will be accepted. Don’t send cash.

When you find information on an office, a phone number is usually included. Before you send off your request, be sure to call to verify that the rates haven’t changed. Also, in many cases, you can find an online page with the address for obtaining current information, and sometimes you can even order the records online by credit card. Often, you will have to include something like a photocopy of your driver’s license as well.

Other steps to take:

    • Type or print all names and addresses in the letter.

    • Be very specific about what you are asking for.

    • Be sure to include the payment.

The National Center for Health Statistics has list of where to write for U.S. records at www.cdc.gov/nchs/w2w.htm. That is usually a good place to start. Also, if you know the state where your ancestor was born or died, search for “vital records” and that state in any search engine. The same is true outside of the United States.

These national sources are great for twentieth-century records. However, if you need information on earlier centuries, city, regional, and local archives may be your best bet. Use your favorite search engine to look for the term “vital records” and the geographical area you need. In Figure 11-1, you can see where I found Bedfordshire/Luton, UK, and searched for Gerard Spencer, Stotfold. The site’s URL is www.bedfordshire.gov.uk/CommunityAndLiving/ArchivesAndRecordOffice/.

FIGURE 11-1. Using Bedfordshire’s Archive search, I found a 1581 record of an ancestor.

In another example, in the state of Tennessee, many vital records, such as births, deaths, and marriages, were not recorded by the state before 1908. Four cities—Chattanooga, Knoxville, Nashville, and Memphis—did keep local records that are now available through the Tennessee State Library and Archives. Searches of these records can be requested by mail if you know the year of the event (birth, death, etc.). The website for the Memphis Public Library has an online index to Memphis death records that covers the years 1848–1945 at www.history.memphislibrary.org. You can get land grant records, too. The fees for these services range from $5 to $20. Go to the Tennessee State Archives site (www.tennessee.gov/tsla/index.htm) for the forms and links.

Tennessee is quite typical: Before Social Security, many states did not keep birth and death records, but localities might have. When Social Security was enacted, many people born in the late nineteenth century had to request a birth certificate be created for them; marriage records in some states were also lax until Social Security. In these cases, you must ask for a delayed certificate, that is, one that was created at the request of the person involved after the fact.

Library of Congress

The mission of the Library of Congress (www.loc.gov) is to “make its resources available and useful to the Congress and the American people and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations.” Today, the LOC has amassed more than 100 million items and become one of the world’s leading cultural institutions. The Library of Congress site gives online access to a small portion of the holdings.

The LOC Local History and Genealogy website has four sections that are of particular use to genealogists (see Figure 11-2). The Local History and Genealogy Reading Room page (www.loc.gov/rr/genealogy) has information on how to prepare for a visit to the reading room. It describes what the room holds and allows you to search the card catalog of holdings. You can search these by subject, author, and other criteria.

FIGURE 11-2. The Library of Congress has a guide to using the resources there.

An important link from this page is to the search hints. As you can imagine, in a catalog of over 100 million items, finding your particular needle is possible, but tricky. Happily, the LOC catalog uses Boolean terms. Search syntax for keyword searching in the Library of Congress online catalog is similar to that of some Internet search engines—use double quotes for phrase searches and type Boolean operators in uppercase. For example, to get an exact phrase in the subject field, you can enter “Spencer family” or “Madison County Alabama.” Do note, however, that the subject field may have county both spelled out and abbreviated as “co.” so search on both. You can search for specific states’ military pensions (military pensions Ohio), specific countries (Heraldry Ireland) and specific record types (Wills Madison County Alabama). You can search for specific books, too, by putting the title in quotation marks and the author after the connector AND.

Many items do not circulate; however, an interlibrary loan may be possible. For libraries in the United States, the Library of Congress serves as a source for material not available through local, state, or regional libraries. A book circulated this way must be used on the premises of the borrowing library; it becomes a temporary reference for that library’s collection for up to 60 days. Requests are accepted from academic, public, and special libraries that make their own material available through participation in an interlibrary loan system. Participation is usually indicated by membership in one of the major U.S. bibliographic networks (for example the Online Computer Library Center or OCLC) or by a listing in the American Library Directory (Bowker) or the Directory of Special Libraries and Information Centers (Gale). So if you find an item that you feel may help your genealogy search, check with your local public library to see if they can participate. You will need the LOC call number (the LOC does not use the Dewey Decimal System), author, title, and date of publication.

American Memory

This section contains documents, photographs, movies, and sound recordings that tell some of America’s story. The direct link is www.memory.loc.gov.

On the American Memory home page, you can click Collection Finder to explore other primary source material. The collections are grouped by subject, then time, then place, and then library division. You can also browse by format if you want a sound file or picture. Each collection has its own distinct character and subject matter, as well as narrative information to describe the content of the collection. Whereas searching all the collections at once could leave items of interest to you “buried” in a long list, visiting a collection’s home page and reading the descriptive information about the collection can give you more direction in finding what you want.

American Treasures

This section of the site is of interest more for the wonderful historical artifacts found there than for any specific genealogy information. The direct link is www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures.

Using the Library of Congress

Click Using The Library of Congress on the home page, and you can click your way through an excellent tutorial on the ins and outs of researching the library in person. If you need to make a trip to the LOC, reading this section first can save you some time and frustration.

The Library Today

This link from the home page tells you about new exhibits, collections, and events at the LOC and its website. Visit it at least once a week because anything new posted to the website will be announced here. The direct link is www.loc.gov/today/.

Research Tools

The Research Tools page at www.lcweb.loc.gov/rr/tools.html takes you to a large set of useful links of interest for researchers, both on the LOC site and on other websites. These include desk references you can use on the Web, the LOC card catalog of all materials (including those not online), and special databases.

The Vietnam Era Prisoner of War/Missing in Action and Task Force Russia Databases at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pow/powhome.html are examples of databases. This URL takes you to a page that gives you access to a massive database of over 137,000 records pertaining to U.S. military personnel.

National Archives and Records Administration

The Library of Congress and the National Archives and Records Administration together are a treasure trove for the family historian. However, using these resources can also be like a snipe hunt! Unlike a library, where you walk up to the card catalog computer, type a subject, find the Dewey Decimal System number, walk to the shelf, and get the book, the archive is organized by government agency. Furthermore, what you find in that catalog at the archives may be a book, a manuscript, or a government whitepaper. This complexity means that first-time archive users often need help.

At the NARA, whether online or in person, you can get that help. At many national archives, that is not the case. For example, Britain’s Public Record Office has rows of volumes listing the contents of files for the Admiralty, the Foreign Office, and Scotland Yard, but the polite archivist there will simply point you to the right shelf. France’s Archives Nationales and Germany’s Bundesarchiv operate the same way. Though the NARA has a long tradition of helping researchers one on one, that may not be the case for long if funding woes continue.

Other NARA Areas to Explore

You can click the Research Room link in the navigation bar to the left of the home page and go to Genealogy from there, or you can go straight to www.archives.gov/research/genealogy. Here you’ll find information for beginners, such as the About Genealogy Research page and a list of research topics in genealogy with links to NARA resources that deal with them. Also, the website has pages to help with Chinese, Hispanic, Japanese-American, Native American, and Other Ethnic Groups/Nationalities, as well as African-American genealogy.

More advanced genealogists will want to read about the census catalogs, the online catalogs, Soundex indexing, and the latest additions to the collection. All genealogists should read the frequently asked questions (FAQs) file and the latest list of genealogy workshops. After touring this general help area, you’re ready to tackle the specific resources on the NARA site.

Access to Archival Databases

You can search various subsets of the NARA holdings from their web databases, starting at http://aad.archives.gov/aad. The Access to Archival Databases (AAD) is a searchable set of records preserved permanently in the NARA. These records identify specific persons, geographic areas, organizations, and dates over a wide variety of civilian and military data, and have many genealogical, social, political, and economic research uses. Among the most popular of these databases are:

    • World War II Army Enlistment Records

    • Records of Prime Contracts Awarded by the Military Services and Agencies

    • Records on Trading of Securities by Corporate Insiders

    • World War II Army Enlistment Records

    • Records About the Proposed Sale of Unregistered Securities by Individuals

    • Data Files Relating to the Immigration of Germans to the United States

    • Central Foreign Policy Files

OPA

The Online Public Access (OPA) portal replaced the Archival Research Catalog (ARC) in 2013. Online Public Access searches all webpages on Archives.gov and returns the websites’ pages, plus catalog records, biographies, and histories from the ARC. Among the results will be electronic records that are available in OPA for viewing and/or downloading. The results will have a line that reads something like, “Includes 18 file(s) described in the catalog.” Any of the hits with electronic records available online will appear in the “Online Holdings” grouping of search results.

Part of what is so wonderful about this updated catalog is the quick access to specific collections, such as the Guion-Miller Roll Index and the Index to the Final Rolls (Dawes)—two censuses of Native American populations from the 1800s and early 1900s—the World War II Army and Army Air Force Casualty List, and the World War II Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard Casualty List.

ALIC

The Archives Library Information Center (ALIC) is for professionals such as NARA staff and librarians nationwide. Its website is www.archives.gov/research/alic.

ALIC provides access to information on American history and government, archival administration, information management, and government documents to NARA staff, archives- and records-management professionals, and the general public.

On the ALIC page, you’ll see links to quick searches of the book catalog, NARA publications on research, and special collections. Under Reference At Your Desk, you’ll see a list of topics, including Genealogy and History. The former has general links to NARA pages already covered in this chapter, as well as links to other websites that can help with genealogy. The latter does the same for general history sites.

Microfilms

From the NARA Genealogy page, you can click Search Microfilm Catalogs. The catalogs list the various microfilms you can purchase, rent, or view onsite from NARA. These 3,400 microfilms can be searched by keyword, microfilm ID, record group number, and/or NARA location. Most of NARA’s microfilm lists and descriptive pamphlets are not online. By searching for microfilm publications in the Microfilm Publications Catalog, however, you will be able to find out if a roll list or descriptive pamphlet is available. You will need to contact one of the NARA locations listed in the Viewing Location field(s) of the microfilm publication description to find out how to get a copy of the descriptive pamphlet or roll list.

Of particular interest is the Genealogical and Biographical Research catalog. This edited list of NARA microfilm publications is at www.archives.gov/publications/microfilm-catalogs/biographical/index.html. It lists the land records, tax records, court records (including naturalization!), and war records available on microfilm.

Federal Register Publications

The Federal Register (www.archives.gov/federal-register) is a legal newspaper published every business day by NARA. It contains federal agency regulations; proposed rules and notices; and executive orders, proclamations, and other presidential documents. NARA’s Office of the Federal Register prepares the Federal Register for publication in partnership with the Government Printing Office (GPO), which distributes it in paper form, on microfiche, and on the World Wide Web.

Prologue

The quarterly NARA magazine Prologue has a webpage you can link to from the NARA home page, or you can go directly to www.archives.gov/publications/prologue. Special issues, such as the 1997 “Federal Records in African-American Research,” may be posted almost in their entirety, but usually, a regular issue has one or two features on the website, plus the regular column “Genealogy Notes.” A list of previous columns can be found in the navigation bar from the Prologue page. This site is worth bookmarking.

Government Land Office

I just “glowed” when I found this resource, the Government Land Office (GLO) site. You can search for and view online original land grants and patents between 1820 and 1928, and order copies from the site.

Land Patent Searches

Go to www.glorecords.blm.gov, and click Search Land Patents in the navigation bar. Type the state and name you are looking for, and you’ll get a list of matching records. For individual records, you can see a summary, the legal land description, and the document image. Not all states are available now, but the BLO is working hard to include them.

You can also obtain a certified copy of a record you find. In addition, you will find a link to a glossary page with details on what the search fields mean. This site does not cover the 13 colonies, their territories, and a few other states, although the site does have resource links for most states. This is because in the early years of the United States, the Congress of the Confederation declared it would sell or grant the unclaimed lands in “the West” (that is, what is now Alabama, Michigan, parts of Minnesota, Mississippi, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin). The United States could then sell this unclaimed land to raise money for the Treasury. In turn, the United States gave up its claims to any land within the boundaries of the original colonies.

When you are researching these records, please remember that things were hardly organized in the first 50 years of our nation. Click the FAQ link for some good tips on what to look for. Here’s a good example of the kind of help you’ll find in the GLO FAQ:

Q. What is the Mississippi/Alabama and Florida/Alabama “Crossover?” A. The St. Stephens Meridian and Huntsville Meridian surveys cross into both Mississippi and Alabama, creating situations where the land offices in St. Stephens and Huntsville, Alabama, and in Columbus, Mississippi, sold lands in both states. We suggest that anyone researching that area take a look at the databases for both states. The original state line between Alabama and Florida did not close against the Tallahassee Meridian survey (which covered all of Florida), but rather against the earlier St. Stephens Meridian survey in south Alabama. The state line was later resurveyed, creating a situation where some Tallahassee Meridian lands fell across the border into Alabama. We suggest that anyone researching that area take a look at the databases for both states.

One of the best resources on this site is the database of survey plats, searchable maps of the original townships. This means that if you have a land grant that gives the boundaries, you will be able to get a small map showing the land. The drawings were created to represent survey lines, boundaries, descriptions, parcels, and subdivisions mentioned in every federal land patent.

With the online shopping cart, you may request certified copies of land patents, either electronically or through the mail. Hard copy will be on a letter-sized sheet of paper (8.5 × 11 inches) of your preference (plain bond or parchment paper).

Census Records

Census records are available in a variety of forms, both online and offline. Census Links is a site with many different country censuses. As you can see in Figure 11-4, www.censuslinks.com has transcriptions of censuses, such as “Roll of Emigrants That Have Been Sent to the Colony of Liberia, Western Africa, by the American Colonization Society and Its Auxiliaries, to September, 1843” and “Ecclesiastical Census of Revilla (Mexico) 1780.”

FIGURE 11-4. Census Links is a good starting place for international census searches.

Another good source is the Archives of Canada. The first census in Canada was in 1666 by Intendant Jean Talon, who listed 3,215 inhabitants. Talon is considered the “father” of modern census-taking in Canada. Regular censuses did not begin in Canada until 1841, however. Several Canadian censuses are searchable online at www.archives.ca.

Use your favorite search engine to search for “census” and the country you are looking in to find other census resources. For example, Brazil’s census information has an English page at www1.ibge.gov.br/english/default.php.

The U.S. Census Bureau

The U.S. Census Bureau generally provides only summary and statistical information for the first 72 years after a census is taken. The data on individuals is kept private until then. That means the 1930 census is the most recent one available for public use. The only services the Census Bureau provides related to genealogy are the Age Search Service and the counts of names from the 1990 census.

The Census Bureau does not have old census forms available. Copies of decennial census forms from 1790 through 1930 are available on microfilm, for research at the NARA in Washington, D.C., at ARCs, and at select Federal Depository Libraries throughout the United States. In addition, these records are available at various other libraries and research facilities throughout the United States. Additional important information at the Census Bureau site is their FAQ at http://www.census.gov/history/www/genealogy/.

Some Census Sites

Other census sites that are more local in nature include:

    • The Ayrshire Free Census Project aims to transcribe all nineteenth-century Ayrshire census records and upload them to a free-to-view online database. This is part of the FreeCEN: UK Census Online Project at www.freecen.org.uk/.

    • Massac County, Illinois History and Genealogy at www.genealogytrails.com/ill/massac/censusindex.html is an ongoing project to transcribe records of births, cemetery records and tombstones, census pages, death records, land grants, marriages, obituaries, biographies, and wills for this specific area.

    • 1920 Yavapai County, Arizona Census Index at www.sharlot.org/archives/gene/census/index.html is a local project. The Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, Arizona, has posted transcriptions of the 1870, 1880, 1900, and 1920 Yavapai County census indexes. Genealogists can search the 1870, 1880, and 1900 census indexes for names and partial names and also get page numbers.

    • African-American Census Schedule at www.afrigeneas.com/aacensus/ is a volunteer project to transcribe pre-1870 census schedules.

    • Transcriptions of censuses around the world are at the USGenWeb project at www.us-census.org. Click Census Surname Search from the USGenWeb home page, and then use the form to search all the census records or to narrow your search by state or year. And consider volunteering, as the work is far from complete!

    • The 1940 Census is free at www.archives.com/1940-census. Earlier census lookups are part of the paid area.

State and Local Sources

Besides the U.S. federal census, some state and local governments took censuses for tax purposes. Such states include Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Wisconsin, to name a few.

You can often trace the migration of families in America when state census records are used with other records, such as the federal census after 1850; family bibles; death certificates; church, marriage, military, probate, and land records; and other American genealogical sources. A major reference source is State Census Records by Ann S. Lainhart (Genealogical Publishing Company, 1992); also check FamilySearch or the catalog of a library under your state of interest and then under the headings “Census Indexes” and “Census.”

Search the Internet to see if state and local censuses have been indexed. See especially the AIS Census Indexes at Ancestry.com (searching Ancestry’s indexes is free; seeing the original record is for paying subscribers only).

State Archives and Libraries

Many state archives and libraries have vital records and census information. For example, www.nysl.nysed.gov/genealogy/vitrec.htm is a guide to getting genealogical records from the state of New York. The Alabama Archives has a list of available census information from the state’s early years at www.archives.state.al.us/referenc/census.html. Search for the state you need, along with “census” or “archives,” to find such sources.

Other Sources

Sometimes you can’t find a birth, marriage, or death record in the “official” sources. In these cases, you can look in county and city court records, newspapers, cemetery and funeral home records, and local libraries. These sources can give you clues to parentage, marriages, and burials, which can help you discover where the records may be located—or that the records were destroyed in some way. Some other sources—both official and private—are working to make documents available online.

Success Story: Stepping Back Through the Censuses

The Internet is one of the few spaces in genealogy that is friendly to people not running Windows, so instead of using CD-ROMs, I subscribe to Images Online at Ancestry.com for easy access to the handwritten census pages. Reading originals instead of relying on transcribers and indexers was part of my success in finding my great-great-grandparents. Tracking my family back through ten-year steps is what worked for me. I had inherited a genealogical chart of my male Downs/Downes line in Connecticut, showing the names of the wives but nothing else about them. So I knew only that my great-grandmother was supposed to be a Charlotte Smith. First, the 1900 census showed my grandfather living with a Charlotte Thompson, described as “Mother” and shown as being born in 1849. The step back to 1890 had to be skipped, of course, because of the destruction of those records. Then the 1880 census showed my grandfather at the age of five living in Oxford, Connecticut, with a Jane M. Burnett, who called him her grandson. This allowed me to leapfrog over the puzzle of my great-grandmother Charlotte and jump directly into the puzzle of my great-great-grandmother Jane. I reasoned that for Charlotte to have been a Smith, it was necessary for this Jane M. Burnett also to have been a Smith when Charlotte was born, so I went to the 1850 census in search of Jane M. Smith.

The 1850 schedules list everybody by name, but the index lists mostly heads of household—meaning that almost all wives and children are invisible until you read the original pages. After spending two months following the wrong Jane M. Smith with no baby Charlotte, I abandoned the index and started wading through every name in Oxford and then in the surrounding towns. In 1860 Naugatuck, I found a Jane M. Smith whose age fit that of Jane M. Burnett, but still no Charlotte. Tracking that family back into the 1850 census, I couldn’t find them in Naugatuck or in Oxford, but I did find them next door in Middlebury. And there, finally, was one-year-old Charlotte along with Jane and—for the first time with certainty—my great-great-grandfather David S. Smith. Since then, the census has helped me to solve many parts of the puzzle. The next steps—back to 1840 and beyond—will be much more difficult because those earlier schedules do not list names of family members except for the head of household, but I am very happy with my success so far.

—Alan Downes

Obituaries and SSDI

The Social Security Death Index (SSDI) is an invaluable tool for twentieth-century family history. However, in accordance with legal regulations, the SSDI will not be updated with names and death dates until a person has been dead three years. This is because claiming that the use of the SSDI led to identity theft (while offering no proof of that claim), Congress curtailed access to the SSDI and exempted its information from the Freedom of Information Act in late 2013. Unless genealogists protest loudly and long enough to have this repealed, the SSDI will now not have the latest data.

Sometimes you can find good clues to vital statistics in obituaries, although one must be cautious. My own parents’ published obituaries had minor errors because the family was not thinking clearly at the funeral home. I suspect that is the case with many death notices. Still, the parents and progeny of the deceased were correct, even if some other particulars were not.

Go to Cyndi’s List and look at the Deaths page (www.cyndislist.com/deaths.htm) for a good collection of sites that specialize in obituaries.

Once you have a place and year of death from an obituary, if your ancestor died in the twentieth century, you should look at the SSDI as a more reliable source for data. This is public record, and you can search it for free at http://searches.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ssdi.html. The results will give you the official birth date, death date, where the Social Security number was issued (usually the place of residence at the time), and where the last payment was made (usually the place of death at the time). With this information, you can use the state’s vital statistics department to get a copy of birth and death certificates, which are primary sources.

Other sites with SSDI lookup are:

    • FamilySearch SSDI Search is at http://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1202535.

    • Genealogy.com (home of Family Tree Maker) offers the SSDI for free, but only as part of their Internet Family Finder search. The advantage is searching many resources at once, but the disadvantage is the overabundance of results to weed through. You also can’t search without the last name.

    • GenealogyBank.com (access is free at many libraries) has over 84 million records updated weekly, which makes it quite a good source for recent deaths.

    • Mocavo has a free SSDI search at http://www.mocavo.com/Social-Security-Death-Index/246389.

    • You can search the SSDI in one step at http://www.stevemorse.org/ssdi/ssdi.html. Steve Morse has created a practical search form that augments the search logic of many of the free SSDI search engines on the Web. You can choose which of several SSDI databases to search. This is one of the easiest SSDI search interfaces available and a favorite of mine.

    • Railroad Retirement Board at http://www.rrb.gov/mep/genealogy.asp is the place to look if your ancestor worked for a railroad company and was covered by the Railroad Retirement Act after 1936.

Interment.net

This is another volunteer site full of free uploaded burial records (www.interment.net). Volunteers transcribe and upload records of every bit of data they can find from a local cemetery. The records include the official name of the cemetery; the location of the cemetery (town, county, state, country, etc.), including the street address of the cemetery or driving directions; the date the transcription was compiled and how (tombstone inscriptions, sexton records, previous transcriptions); how complete the list is; and the names of the compilers. As of this writing, almost 4 million records were available for searching or browsing.

You can also subscribe to a newsfeed of all new transcriptions published on Interment.net daily and of the Cemetery Blog news and articles from the weekly web log of the site.

Fold3

Fold3 digitizes military historical documents, and works in partnership with NARA. The name comes from the way the flag is folded at military funerals. Here, you will find millions of images of original source documents, many of which have never been available online before. Hundreds of the documents are free, and if you find something you have background information on, you can comment on and annotate it. You can also create your own story page, pulling images from the collection to it.

Launched in January 2007, it has added about 2,000,000 items a month, most of them handwritten. You can browse or use a search box (you can do a Boolean search) to find military records, naturalization records, and more. As of this writing, only U.S. documents are being scanned and indexed, but Justin Schroepfer of Fold3 said that soon, more countries will be included. American Milestone Documents, Project Blue Book, Pennsylvania Archives documents from 1664–1880, and all indexed information and previews of all of the images are free. You are also invited to scan and upload your own historical documents, whether they are photographs, diaries, bible records, and so on. Access to other documents is by subscription.

Some of the free pieces of information include:

    • The Ratified Amendments XI–XXVII of the U.S. Constitution

    • Copybooks of George Washington’s Correspondence with Secretaries of State, 1789–1796

    • Naturalization Petitions of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, 1906–1930

    • Naturalization Petitions for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, 1906–1930

    • Naturalization Petitions for the Eastern District of Louisiana, New Orleans Division, 1838–1861

    • Presidential Photos of Coolidge, Eisenhower, Truman, and Roosevelt

    • World War II Japanese Photos

    • The Case File of the United States v. The Amistad, 1841

Online Searches

The UK 1901 census is available for searching online at www.1901censusonline.com/. This site had a disastrous beginning: When it first went online, it had over a million hits in the first hours, the server crashed, and it was months before it was back up. They finally got it all on servers able to handle the traffic, and now several UK censuses are available besides 1901: 1891, 1871, 1861, 1851, and 1841 census records and Birth, Marriage and Death (BMD) indexes. The censuses, like U.S. censuses, ask different questions for different censuses, such as occupation and place of birth. Other records are available, too, as this list shows:

    • Address search Find out who lived in your house in 1901.

    • Place search Look at who was in which enumeration district in 1901.

    • Institution search See who lived in hospitals, barracks, orphanages, etc., in 1901.

    • Vessel search Locate a naval or merchant vessel in the 1901 census.

    • Reference number Use this search if you know the National Archives census.

Like Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com, you can search the indexes for free, but looking at the actual record costs a fee. Unlike Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com, you can pay per record, put your subscription on hold, and buy a set of voucher lookups. Viewing transcribed data costs 50 credits for an individual and then 50 credits for a list of all other people in that person’s household. Viewing a digital image of the census page costs 75 credits.

Transcriptions

As mentioned earlier, www.censuslinks.com is one way to find census transcriptions from around the world. Also check Cyndi’s List at www.cyndislist.com/census.htm.

CDs and Microfilms

Several vendors provide CD-ROMs and microfilm of census records—sometimes images of the actual census form and sometimes transcriptions. Your local library, LDS Family History Center, or genealogy club may have copies of these microfilms and/or CD-ROMs with census images.

Bible Records Online

Bible Records Online (www.biblerecords.com) is a site dedicated to transcribing and digitizing the contents of records inside family bibles and in other important documents from as early as the 1500s through today. Often, these were the only written records of births, marriages, and deaths of a family, but they are usually inaccessible except to the person who owns them.

At www.biblerecords.com, you can browse or search by surname. The results will be a transcribed page. To submit your own family bible records, go to www.biblerecords.com/submit.html. Tracy St. Claire, the site’s administrator, has a standard format for the transcriptions to make them easy to read and compare. If you can submit a scan of the original, that is wonderful, but she will take a transcription alone. The site also has a forum and a place for scans of photographs or other items people typically slip into the family bible as keepsakes.

Wrapping Up

    • Vital statistics are the milestones of life: birth, marriage, sometimes divorce, and death.

    • Most states have good vital statistics starting from 1938 (the beginning of Social Security). Prior to that, you may have to get creative, looking at obituaries, census records, family bible sites, and other sites.

    • The Library of Congress and National Archives and Records Administration have several resources, guides, and databases to help genealogists.

    • Many sites have transcribed and scanned original documents, indexed for searching by surname: bibles, cemetery records, and so on. Some are free and some are subscription based.