Free Time Today? Don't Miss National Archives Virtual Genealogy Fair!

The National Archives is holding its first-ever virtual Genealogy Fair on September 3 and 4 (2013) 10 a.m.–4 p.m. EST

The Fair will be streamed online through Ustream. It's free, and there's no reservations or passwords. You can ask questions through the chat function, or  tweet your questions to @usnatarchives #genfair2013.

Experts from the National Archives will be discussing Native American and African American history, immigration, Civil War pensions, U.S. Colored Troops, and Navy Deck logs.

We hope to "see" you there: http://www.archives.gov/dc-metro/know-your-records/genealogy-fair/

Recorded sessions will be available online after the event.

Korean War Casualties now on Fold3

Records of U.S. Army officers and soldiers killed or wounded in the Korean War are now available on Fold3. Korean War Casualties is available free to any visitors to the site.

One quarter of the nearly 110,000 records in Korean War Casualties connects to information about Army personnel who died during the war, 1950-1953, including those who died while a prisoner of war or missing in action. The remaining three quarters are for nonfatal Army casualties.

The Korean War Casualties database is from the Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1905-1981 (Record Group 407), at the National Archives (NARA). It was compiled between 1950 and 1970, and covers the period from the earliest casualty (February 13, 1950) to the latest date in the date of disposition field, December 31, 1953.

The information on each casualty may include: name, service prefix and number, grade, Army branch, place and date of casualty, state and county of residence, type of casualty, detail/previous casualty type, casualty group, place and date of disposition, year of birth (for deceased casualties only), military occupational specialty, organization troop program sequence number, element sequence, unit number, race, component, and disposition of evacuations.

Launch your search within the records from the Korean War Casualty title page or use the browse option and highlight the Korean War category. Records are ordered alphabetically. (NARA also provides a list of fatal casualties by state on its website.)

When you find a soldier in the Korean War Casualties records on Fold3, you’ll link directly to a memorial page for that soldier where we invite you to add stories, photos, documents, and other information relating to that individual. Examples of two pages to which newspaper articles were added include twice-wounded Purple Heart recipient Dwight L. Huston, of Mt. Vernon, IL; and Pittsfield, MA, native Arthur A. Boland.

When added to the memorial pages, your stories and photos help sustain the memories of United States heroes in the Korean War and allow others to connect with and honor them.

Press Release: USCIS Transfers More Historical Records to National Archives

Great news! USCIS Transfers More Historical Records to National Archives  

Approximately 44,000 Files to be transferred to Archives Facility in San Bruno, Calif.

Release Date May 22, 2012

WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) today announced the transfer of approximately 44,000 additional alien registration records, known as “A-Files,” to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

USCIS transferred the historical records from its San Bruno Federal Records Center to the permanent custody of the National Archives Pacific Region facility in San Bruno, Calif.  It is anticipated that the transferred files will be available to the public beginning today.

This is the fourth in a series of immigration file transfers initiated in June 2009, when USCIS and NARA formalized a schedule to relocate eligible A-Files for permanent preservation in the National Archives.

“It is imperative that we protect and treasure America’s immigration history,” said USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas. “The very fabric of our nation can be found in these files and we are pleased to work with our partners at NARA to ensure their preservation and access for future generations.”
 
The United States Government first began keeping the individual case files in 1944 to document the interactions between individual aliens and the U.S. government. A-Files are unique because they contain not only demographic information, but in many cases also include a number of other personal and historical documents, such as photographs, foreign birth certificates, marriage licenses and interview transcripts.

The A-Files being moved to the National Archives Pacific Region facility represent immigrants born between the 1860s and 1910. The top three countries of origin represented are Japan (42 percent), the Philippines (34 percent) and China (6 percent). A number of other countries are represented in the A-Files, including Mexico, Portugal and Canada.

In keeping with the 2009 schedule, A-Files located at the San Bruno Federal Records Center will be added to the holdings of the National Archives Pacific Region in San Bruno; all other A-Files will be transferred to the National Archives in Kansas City, Mo. as they become eligible.

USCIS currently maintains approximately 59 million A-Files. In addition to the A-Files that have been transferred to San Bruno, about 477,000 have been transferred to the permanent custody of the National Archives in Kansas City. About 90 percent of those files represent immigrants who came to the United States before 1960.

Once the A-Files are in NARA custody, they will be available to the public inNational Archives research rooms and indexed in NARA’s online Archival Research Catalog. Copies of the A-Files can also be requested by mail.

For more information about A-File research at the National Archives, visit their website. Additional immigration information and links to resources related to genealogical research are available on USCIS’s website.

It's Here! The 1940 U.S. Census Arrives. And it's FREE

The following announcement was sent to Olive Tree Genealogy from Ancestry.com

The National Archives and Records Administration will open the 1940 U.S. Federal Census on April 2, 2012—the first time this collection will be made available to the public. Once we receive the census, Ancestry.com will begin uploading census images to our site so the public can browse them.  (Update from Lorine: Several states and their images are already online this morning)

 Initially, this collection will be what we call a browse-only collection. This means a person can scroll through the pages of the census districts much like you would look at a microfilm or a book. At the same time, we will be working behind the scenes to create an index of the census that will eventually allow people to search for their family members by name as they currently can with all other censuses on Ancestry.com.

Note also that the 1940 U.S. Federal Census will be accessible free of charge throughout 2012 on Ancestry.com.

By the way, two key questions people have are how long will the upload process take? and when will my state be ready. Unfortunately, until we start the process we have no idea exactly how long it will be before all images or a specific state will be uploaded.

We like to use this analogy: think about how long it takes to upload all of the images on a memory card onto a home computer. Now imagine that memory card holds 3.8 million, very-high-definition images. You get the picture.

You Can Transcribe it! NARA's Transcription Project

NARA Transcription Pilot Project

Great news. You can now join the National Archives Transcription Pilot Project  and help transcribe documents. It's very easy, in fact I just went in and typed out one page of a document in less than 15 minutes.

The document I transcribed was the 1851 Petition of Edward Gorsuch found in a Fugitive Slave Petition Book. Edward lived in Baltimore County Maryland and the first page (which I transcribed) mentions the full names (first and last) of several of his slaves as well as their ages 


There are 3 categories of documents - beginner, intermediate and advanced. I've transcribed hundreds or possibly thousands of documents over the years so I jumped into advanced.  You can enlarge the page you are reading and the scans are crystal clear so it truly isn't difficult.

If you're just starting out or the document you chose is difficult, you can leave and pick another one. This is a great way to contribute a few minutes or more of your time and help make these historic documents more accessible to all.

National Archives and Footnote.com Announce New Digital Holocaust Collection

A press notice about this amazing new collection online came to my email box this morning. I've pulled the highlights to share with readers:

Collection includes Holocaust-related photos and records available online for first time

Washington DC and Lindon, UT -September 29, 2009 - The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and Footnote,com today announced the release of the internet's largest Interactive Holocaust Collection. For the first time ever, over one million Holocaust-related records - including millions of names and 26,000 photos from the National Archives- will be available online.

Included among the National Archives records available online at
Footnote,com are:

Concentration camp registers and documents from Dachau, Mauthausen,Auschwitz, and Flossenburg.

The "Ardelia Hall Collection" of records relating to the Nazi looting of Jewish possessions, including looted art.

Captured German records including deportation and death lists from concentration camps.

Nuremberg War Crimes Trial proceedings.

*** Access to the collection will be available for free on Footnote,com through the month of October ***

The collection also includes nearly 600 interactive personal accounts of those who survived or perished in the Holocaust provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The project incorporates social networking tools that enable visitors to search for names and add photos, comments and stories, share their insights, and create pages to highlight their discoveries. There will be no charge to access and
contribute to these personal pages.

So that visitors may more easily access and engage the content, Footnote,com has created a special Holocaust site featuring:

Stories of Holocaust victims and survivors.

Place where visitors can create their own pages to memorialize their Holocaust ancestors.

Pages on the concentration camps - includes descriptions, photos,maps, timelines and accounts from those who survived the camps.

Descriptions and samples of the original records from the National Archives.

The Holocaust collection is the latest in a continuing partnership between Footnote,com and the National Archives to scan, digitize, and make historical records available online. The goal is to give more people access to these and other historical records that have previously only been available through the research room of the National Archives. This partnership brings these priceless resources to an even greater number of people and enables the National Archives
to provide ever-greater access to these critical holdings.

NARA Makes Some Passenger Arrival Records Available Online

This week, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) announced that it has made available for the first time online more than 5.2 million records of some passengers who arrived during the last half of the 19th century at the ports of Baltimore, Boston, New Orleans, New York, and Philadelphia. The records can be accessed through NARA’s online Access to Archival Databases (AAD).

The records were transcribed from original ship manifests into electronic databases by Temple University’s Center for Immigration Research at The Balch Institute. The Center donated the digital records to the National Archives. The records are known as Data Files Relating to the Immigration of Germans to the United States, 1850-1897; Data Files Relating to the Immigration of Italians to the United States, 1855-1900; and Data Files Relating to the Immigration of Russians to the United States, 1834-1897.

This series consists of records of 527,394 passengers who arrived at the United States between 1834 through 1897 and identified their country of origin or nationality as Armenia, Finland, Galicia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia,Russian Poles, or Ukraine. There are records of passengers who were U.S. citizens or non-U.S. citizens planning to continue their travels, returning to the U.S., or staying in
the U.S. There are records of passengers arriving at the following ports: Baltimore, Boston, New Orleans, New York, and Philadelphia; the bulk of the records are for passengers arriving at the Port of New York.

Each of the passenger records may include name, age, town of last residence,
destination, and codes for passenger's sex, occupation,literacy, country of origin, transit and/or travel compartment, and the identification number for the ship
manifest. Information on each ship is in the manifest header file and includes the ship manifest identification number, the name of the ship, the code for its port of departure, and date of arrival. The ship manifest identification number indicates the port of arrival.

More Ships Passenger Lists can be found at Olive Tree Genealogy