Using Documents in Archives
To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.
You started the search for your ancestors
at home, talked to members of your extended family for more answers, and
wrote to a vital records center for additional information. By now, you
should have learned some basic facts about your ancestors: names, dates,
and places. But few people start a genealogical project just to learn names,
dates, and places.
By searching records in local, state, and national archives, you will add “flesh” to the “bones” of your ancestors. As you learn more about how they lived through deeds, immigration papers, census records, and wills, they will become three-dimensional characters. You will learn about their neighbors (through land grants), their income (through tax records), and their legal transactions (through court records). Throughout this process, you will be able to verify much of the information recorded in the family interview in Lesson 3, and family legends discovered along the way.
Genealogists spend most of their research
time in archives. In this lesson, you will look at the types of documents
found in an archive and learn what information is likely to be found
in each type of document.
- Sources of Genealogical Information in Archives
- Visiting an Archive
- On-Line Archival Record Sources
- Lesson Plan: Dissecting the Archival Document
Sources of Genealogical Information in Archives
Listed below are records typically found in archives and the information you can expect to find in these records. Note that there is no standard method of generating, storing, or retaining records. Therefore, records of the same type might not contain the same data. Use the descriptions below as a guideline only. Do not be disappointed if the information you seek is not in the first document you check. Some information is duplicated in different types of official records.
- Wills/Probate Records
- Deeds/Land Grants
- Court Records
- Tax Records
- Military Records
- Census Records
- Immigration Records
- Newspapers
- Church Records
- Manuscripts (Personal Papers)
Wills/Probate
Records
Wills are documents made by people who
want to specify where their property will go after they die. If a person
dies without having made a will, the government decides how to dispose
of the person’s property, and a probate record is created.
Information found in wills:
-Name of deceased
-Date of will and place it was
made
-Date and place the will was recorded
(after person’s death)
-Names and relationships of heirs
and others, and property received
-Name of executor of will (person
in charge of carrying out will)
-Names of witnesses to will
What wills tell us:
-Family relationships (sometimes
they are the best source of this information)
-Names of close friends, neighbors,
and, sometimes, employees of deceased
-Real and personal property owned
at time of death
Wills and probate records are most likely found in local records repositories.
Deeds/Land Grants
Deeds are records of property transfers
between individuals.
Information found in deeds:
-Name and address of grantor (seller
of property)
-Name and address of grantee (buyer
of property)
-Amount and description of property
-Amount of money paid for property
-Date of sale
-Names of witnesses to deed
Land grants, or land patents, were given to people who received land from the government.
Information found in land grants:
-Name of grantee (person receiving
land from government)
-Date grantee settled in area
-Place of origin
-Size of land grant and description
of area
What deeds and land grants tell us:
-Where a person lived at a particular
time in the past
-Person’s occupation or ethnicity
(sometimes listed)
-Family relationships (when property
was divided among children, for example)
Deeds are most likely found in local records repositories. Land grants are most likely found in state and national records repositories.
Court Records
Court records can include descriptions
of personal property, information about relationships between people involved
in court cases, and financial information (income or individual sales of
goods and services). These records vary in content, but can provide information
about ancestors’ personalities and priorities.
Court records can be found in local, state, and national (U.S. Supreme Court) records repositories.
Tax Records
Tax lists are kept for personal property
taxes or land taxes, and they vary from area to area. Tax records are kept
in local and state records repositories.
Military Records
Military records include muster rolls,
payrolls, and, most useful, pension records. People who retired from military
service were entitled to receive a sum of money, or pension, from the government.
To receive a pension, a person had to prove military service and provide
other information.
Information in pension records:
-Name, rank, and time served in
military
-Dates and locations of service,
including battles fought
-Names of family members (widows
and children of deceased servicepeople were entitled to receive pensions)
-Hometown
Most military records are kept at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Military records in state repositories include records of colonial militia dating before the Revolutionary War and pension records of soldiers who served in the Civil War.
Census Records
The U.S. census, started in 1790 and taken
every ten years since, is a count of the population of the country. The
census provides information that sometimes cannot be found in any other
record.
The information gathered in the census has changed over time, so some census records contain more information than others. Early census records often listed the name of the head of household and the number of males and females living in the house by age groups. In 1850 census records began listing the name, sex, and age of every person living in the household.
Basic information contained in the census:
-Name of each person in household
-Address
-Age
-Sex
-Race
-Occupation
-Value of real property (in 1860
a listing for personal property was added)
-Place of birth
-Marital status
-Academic status
More detailed census records include the
following information:
-Citizenship status of males over
21 (added in 1870)
-Relationship of person to head
of household (added in 1880)
-Marital status (added in 1880)
and number of years married (added in 1900)
-Employment status (added in 1880)
-Year of immigration to U.S. (added
in 1900)
-Status as homeowner or renter
(added in 1900)
-Ability to read, write, and speak
English (added in 1900)
Find forms for recording census information in Emily Anne Croom’s book Unpuzzling Your Past. Because census records have changed over the years, Croom has created a separate form for nearly every decade. Also find census forms at the Family Tree Maker Web site: http://www.familytreemaker.com/00000061.html.
Some states also conducted censuses. These records as well as microfilm copies of U.S. census records for your state can be found in state archives. Copies of all U.S. census records are located at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and at eleven regional archives in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Fort Worth, Kansas City, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Note: Census information remains confidential for seventy years to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens. The most recent census available today for genealogical research is the 1920 census, which was declassified in 1990. The 1930 census should be available sometime in 2001.
Census records are not completely accurate. Census takers made mistakes, especially in spelling names. And the handwriting in many records is hardly legible!
Immigration
Records
These records are kept at the National
Archives in Washington, D.C., and are filed by port of entry (the place
where an immigrant is permitted to enter the country). They are mostly
passenger lists for ships arriving in 1819 and later. Several indexes of
this information exist, some organized by nationality, and are available
in libraries with strong genealogy collections. This information can be
complicated to find, so ask for help!
Newspapers
Old newspapers often provide information
on the communities in which your ancestors lived, the events, and sometimes
even the gossip of the day! You’ll find ads for businesses and professional
practices (doctors, lawyers, etc.), public announcements (town and church
meetings), notices of estate and personal property sales, obituaries, birth
announcements, and “help wanted” or other classified ads. Microfilm newspaper
records can be found at local and state libraries and archives. The Library
of Congress in Washington, D.C., has the largest collection of newspapers
in existence.
Church Records
Churches keep some of the same vital records
that local and state governments keep. If you cannot find birth, marriage,
or death records for an ancestor, try looking in church records to fill
in the gaps. Some church records are available on microfilm, but most are
kept locally.
Manuscripts
(Personal Papers)
Personal papers can include almost anything.
Diaries, letters, and other personal records of your ancestors may have
been donated to a local or state archive. Lesson 1 contains information
on using these sources.
Rare is the archival collection that has not sustained some kind of damage in its history. Most archives encounter fires, floods, misuse of documents, and even theft at some point. Some records have been lost to researchers forever. Do not assume that, because an archive should have a document you seek, it will have the document. Following the steps below will help you find documents in archives and use them properly.
Step 1: Know what you want and where to find it. Plan ahead. Determine what documents will answer your research questions. Contact the archive to find out if it has the document you seek. If the archive is in your town, visit it and use the finding aids—indexes to the collection—to determine which records are available. If the archive is not nearby, call or write the reference archivist and ask if the archive has the record you require. Be specific in your request (for example, ”I’m looking for land grants from Bertie County from 1850 to 1875”) because many archives are missing records from certain time periods.
Step 2: Make an appointment to visit the archive. Archives do not require researchers to make appointments, but many archivists will set aside records for patrons who have made appointments to do research. For instance, when you call on Tuesday afternoon to find out whether the local archive has a specific record, tell the archivist that you will come to the archive on Saturday morning to view the document. If the archivist has had to physically locate the document, he or she will probably reserve the document for you rather than reshelve it. This will allow you to maximize your research time at the archive.
Step 3: Follow the rules! Know and respect the rules of the archive you are visiting. Be responsible. You might handle documents that are several centuries old. But handle all documents carefully, regardless of their age or condition, so that they will be available to researchers in the future. Here are a few general rules to remember:
- Always have clean hands when handling documents.
- Always use a pencil to write in your notebook when you are working near documents. Never use a pen.
- Turn pages slowly and carefully. Ask for help with particularly fragile documents.
- Be courteous and quiet, and do not interfere with other researchers.
- Never have food, drink, or chewing gum around records.
Ask for help politely and professionally when you need it. Do not try to do too much in one day. Thank the archivist or records manager for his or her help. When you get home, record the information from your notes onto your Family Data Sheets while it is fresh in your mind.
8On-Line Archival Record Sources
Keep in mind that extractions and transcriptions may have errors or be incomplete. Use original sources whenever possible and use extractions and transcriptions only as a starting point to help guide your research. Some of the following Web sites below, marked with an asterisk, can be accessed only after paying a nominal fee. Other sites contain commercial advertisements and sell genealogy-related products.
General Resources
*Ancestry.com
http://www.ancestry.com/
This site offers a wide range of genealogical
research services—some free, some available through paid subscription—including
800 searchable databases and an on-line family tree application.
*GENDEX -- WWW Genealogical Index
http://www.gendex.com/gendex/
This server indexes hundreds of on-line
databases containing genealogical data for over twelve million individuals.
Some services are free; others require a fee to access.
*Genealogy Library.com
http://www.familytreemaker.com/glc_deny.html
With a subscription, access a collection
of more than 2,500 genealogy databases and primary resources. The company
guarantees that subscribers will find an ancestor or else receive a refund.
The Olive Tree Genealogy Index to Passenger
Lists
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ote/indexshp.htm
This site contains passenger lists and
ship information for many ships traveling from the 1400s through the 1900s,
arranged by century and by destination.
RootsWeb Searches
http://searches.rootsweb.com/
This site gives free access to many searchable
on-line databases.
RootsWeb Surname List
http://rsl.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/rslsql.cgi
Search more than 896,000 surnames entries
on file.
North Carolina Resources
African American Cemeteries Online:
North Carolina
http://www.prairiebluff.com/aacemetery/nc.htm
This site offers names and birth and death
dates from African American cemeteries in North Carolina, listed by county.
Census Online Links: North Carolina
http://www.census-online.com/links/NC.html
This site has 220 links to federal and
state census and military records, listed by county.
USGenWeb Archives North Carolina
http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/nc/ncfiles.htm
The USGenWeb North Carolina Archives,
searchable by county and surname, were developed to provide transcriptions
of public domain documents on the Internet.
?Lesson
Plan: Dissecting an Archival Document
| Overview: | Club members will dissect an archival
document, breaking it down into separate facts to determine the meaning
of the whole document.
|
| Purpose: | To learn how to extract genealogical information
from archival records.
|
| Time: | Two club meetings
|
| Objectives: | Competency Goal 4 of the N.C. Informational
Skills Curriculum, all grade
levels (The learner will EXPLORE and USE research processes to meet information needs). Competency Goals 1, 2, and 6 of the N.C. English Language Arts Curriculum, all grade levels. Skills I, II, and III in the N.C. Social Studies Curriculum, all grade levels. |
| Materials: | Copies of 1880
census from Yancey County, N.C. (excerpt)
Making Sense of the Census worksheet Pencils and notebook paper |
Procedure:
- Distribute copies of the 1880 Yancey county census excerpt and Making Sense of the Census worksheets to club members. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view and print the Yancey county census (click here to download this free software). To print this legal size document, click once on the printer icon on the Acrobat Reader toolbar directly above the image, and then click once on the Properties button at the top right of the Print box. Choose Black Text in the Printout area; Normal or Presentation in the Print Quality area; Portrait in the Orientation area; Plain Paper in the Media Area; and Legal in the Media Size area. Choose OK to return to the main Print menu, load a sheet of legal-sized paper in your printer, then click on OK to print the census.
- Review with the club the information on census records in the “Sources of Genealogical Information in Archives” section of the workshop.
- Have students, in groups or individually, answer the questions on the worksheet using a sample household from the census excerpt.
- Review the answers as a club. Discuss the process of extracting information from census records. Have students write a short story about a typical day in the life of the Yancey County family.
- Assign students the task of finding one census record containing information about their own family and filling out the Making Sense of the Census worksheet.
Lesson 6 Handouts:
1880
Yancey County census
Making
Sense of the Census worksheet
Linebar graphic by Vickimouse (http://www.vikimouse.com/)
