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National Archives

The National Archives offers insight into the lives of people, their families and our history. Because the records at the National Archives come from every branch of the Federal government, almost all Americans can find themselves, their ancestors, or their community in the archives. 

Online records useful for genealogy include (but are not limited to!)

The Dawes Rolls  ( Index to the Final Rolls of the Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory)

Eastern Cherokee Roll of 1909 (Guion Miller Roll) (Index)

Military records, including WWII Army enlistment, prisoner of war, and casualty records

Immigration Records 1834 - 1900

Archival Research Catalog (ARC) is the online catalog of NARA's nationwide holdings in the Washington, DC, area; Regional Archives; and Presidential Libraries. HINT: look for the yellow search button on the left side of the main screen.

Also try: Access to Archival Databases (AAD) Out of the nearly 200,000 data files in its holdings, NARA has selected about 475 (85 million records) of them for public searching through AAD. These records identify specific persons, geographic areas, and dates.  NARA will continually add more databases. Check back periodically to the "What's New" section of AAD.

Library of Congress Digital Collections

 American Memory, the flagship of the Library's digital services, offers multimedia collections of digitized documents, photographs, recorded sound, motion pictures, and text from the American historical collections of the Library and other institutions. American Memory now offers more than 7.5 million digital items from more than 100 historical collections.

The Library's Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) contains catalog records and digital images representing a rich cross section of still pictures held by the Prints & Photographs Division and other units of the Library. The catalog provides access through group or item records to about 50 percent of the Division's holdings. About 90 percent of the records are accompanied by one or more digital images.

The Library also offers vast digital materials in the area of legislation and law. Acting under the directive of the leadership of the 104th Congress to make Federal legislative information freely available to the Internet public, the Library of Congress provides the THOMAS , offering full text of bills and the Congressional Record. The Library also cooperates internationally to collect digitized laws, regulations, and other complementary legal sources in the Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) project.

The National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress to provide enhanced access to United States newspapers. Ultimately, over a period of approximately 20 years, NDNP will create a national, digital resource of historically significant newspapers from all the states and U.S. territories published between 1836 and 1922. http://www.loc.gov/ndnp/ 

The two agency partners launched a prototype of this digital resource, "Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers," in March 2007. This site allows you to search and read newspaper pages from 1900-1910 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.

Primary Documents in American History: from the Library of Congress The site is divided into sections covering eras of American History. Each of these sections link to a list of important documents from that era. For each item there is a page with background information about the document and a list of links to digital materials concerning that document from the Library's site and elsewhere.

100 milestone documents of American history is a cooperative effort among National History Day, The National Archives and Records Administration, and USA Freedom Corps. 

AMDOCS - Documents for the study of American History This site is a list of links to primary documents. It starts with "The Saga of Eric the Red", circa 1000, and continues on through 49 single spaced pages to recently published documents. Each time period of American history is represented in clear chronological order.  Maintained by George Laughead, Jr. of  Kansas Heritage.

A Hypertext on American History from the colonial period until Modern Times Department of Humanities Computing, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. The Magna Carta is the first document here. The most recent (as of October 2007) is the inaugural address of George W. Bush in 2001. In between you will find the inaugural address and "state of the nation" speeches of George Washington and every other United States President.  Documents are divided into 195 separate chronological sections.  

Documenting the American South  is a collection of sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20^th century.  Unpublished manuscripts of first person narratives, including slave narratives, make this collection unique. Maintained by the University of North Carolina.

Godey's Lady's Book  This journal included fashion plates as well as poems, fiction, editorials, literary notices, fashion and needlework patterns, and advice articles. Both websites listed include illustrations. http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/godey/index.html and http://www.history.rochester.edu/godeys/

The Avalon Project at Yale Law School.  Documents in law, history and diplomacy. The earliest document is Acilian Law on the Right to Recovery of Property Officially Extorted, 122 B.C..   The most recent (as of Oct 2007) is The Tenet Plan : Israeli-Palestinian Ceasefire and Security Plan, Proposed by CIA Director George Tenet; June 13, 2001    http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm

Famous Trials University of Missouri, Kansas City. Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history. Most trial pages include an essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies of key figures in the trials, and primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia The Oyez Project is a multimedia archive devoted to the Supreme Court of the United States and its work. It aims to be a complete and authoritative source for all audio recorded in the Court since the installation of a recording system in October 1955. The Project also provides authoritative information on all justices and offers a virtual reality 'tour' of portions of the Supreme Court building, including the chambers of some of the justices.

American Social and Cultural History from the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum complex and research organization composed of 19 museums and 9 research centers.

Making of America (MoA) A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.

New Deal Network  This site contains hundreds of primary sources related to the Depression era and the New Deal, including letters, photographs, posters, political cartoons, government documents, speeches, and more. You can also find background information on New Deal programs.

The Ad*Access  Project, funded by the Duke Endowment "Library 2000" Fund, presents images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955.. 

African-American Women On-line archival collections featuring scanned pages and texts of the writings of African-American women.

A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History & Culture

Ellis Island American Family Immigration History Center Research records of passengers who came to America through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924.

CastleGarden.org offers free access to an extraordinary database of information on 10 million immigrants from 1830 through 1892, the year Ellis Island opened. Over 73 million Americans can trace their ancestors to this early immigration period.

National Park Service Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System --a computerized database containing very basic facts about servicemen who served on both sides during the Civil War. The initial focus of the CWSS is the Names Index Project, a project to enter names and other basic information from 5.4 million soldier records in the National Archives. 

Civil War Women On-line archival collections featuring scanned pages and texts of the writings of women during the American Civil War.

The American Civil War Homepage gathers together in one place hypertext links to the most useful identified electronic files about the American Civil War (1861-1865). The page opens a gateway to the Internet's multi-formatted resources about what is arguably the seminal event in American history. Not only was the War the occasion for the abolition of slavery, but by conflict's end the re-United States had emerged as a modern, industrialized power.  

The Valley of the Shadow
Learn about the impact of the Civil War on two counties, Pennsylvania's Franklin County and Virginia's Augusta County, through the primary source images, documents, letters, newspapers, and maps at this site.

Western Trails: An Online Journey
"The Western Trails digital database provides access to thousands of primary documents associated with various aspects of Western US history."