 Good morning. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States. Welcome to our Virtual Genealogy Fair. For 14 years, the National Archives has hosted an annual Genealogy Fair. And since 2013, we've been doing a live webcast on YouTube. Our sessions offer family history research tools on federal records for all skill levels. Thousands of family historians participate in the live event each year. As a virtual attendee, you can participate with the presenters and other family historians and watch individual sessions and download the materials at your convenience. Since going virtual seven years ago, we are able to have these resources and tools available for family historians in the form of lecture video recordings and handouts on our Genealogy Fair web page. This annual event is an opportunity to bring us together to share knowledge about the National Archives Holdings and research strategies. Sessions will offer guidance on the National Archives History Hub, preserving personal collections, using records relating to immigration, World War I soldiers and Marines, Bureau of Indian Affairs Schools, and the Homestead Act. As you enjoy this Genealogy Fair, I encourage you to visit our website, archives.gov. We have many other resources available, including videos from our Know Your Records programs, an ongoing series of free public programs created to show you how to use federal government records held at the National Archives for historical and genealogical research. These videos include the previous six virtual gene affairs, our National Archives catalog where you can find documents of genealogical interest to genealogists, and the research at the National Archives page on Facebook where you can follow the latest topics on genealogy. You can also connect with virtual genealogy attendees on Twitter using the hashtag shown on the screen. The dedication of National Archives staff is one of our greatest assets in carrying out the mission of this agency. And I want to thank our presenters, Rebecca Collier, Darren Cole, Kelly Osborne, Sarah Holmes, Elizabeth Burns, Nathaniel Patch, Cody White, and James Moon for their efforts. Moreover, special thanks to our research, services, workplace culture, and training manager, Vernon Smith, and the program analyst Andrea Matney for putting this all together. Our role at NARA is to preserve the records that have permanent value. We have over 15 billion pages of records, 44 million photographs, thousands of motion pictures, maps, broadsides, and electronic records. History comes to life at the National Archives through these holdings. Thank you and enjoy the Virtual Genealogy Fair. Good morning. My name is Vernon Smith, and I'm Research Services Workplace, Culture, and Training Manager. You just heard from Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero. I also welcome you to the 2019 Virtual Genealogy Fair. Before we begin our six sessions, I have three helpful tips on how to participate with chat and access the captioning and the handouts. First, because we are broadcasting live, you can chat with the other family historians and ask presenters questions. First, log into YouTube and then type your comments and questions there. Speakers will answer chat questions at the end of their talks during the question and answer time. Secondly, for live captioning, find the provided link on this page below the video screen. Open the link in a separate browser window, and if you don't currently see the link, simply click where it says Show More. Thirdly, for handouts, look for the links provided on this page. After the event, the video presentations and handouts will remain available. And I am now turning over the lecture into Andrea Matney, the coordinator of the Virtual Genealogy Fair. Andrea. Thank you, Vernon. Welcome and hello. My name is Andrea Matney. Please know that Vernon Smith, my and my coworker, Amber Forester, and I are responding to the YouTube chat and will be the voices of your questions at the end of each session. So welcome to session of, first session of the 2019 Virtual Genealogy Fair, exploring History Hub for Genealogists and Researchers by presenters Rebecca Collier, Darren Cole, and Kelly Osborne. They'll be introducing History Hub, the National Archives crowd-source platform for history and genealogy research, including some background guidance for getting started and how to join the community. Ms. Collier is the research services History Hub coordinator at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. Mr. Cole is a digital engagement specialist at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Ms. Osborne is a community manager and web developer at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. I am now turning the broadcast over to Kelly Osborne. Thanks, Andrea. So History Hub is our crowd-sourcing platform for researchers. Here's kind of what it looks like. It's not just for genealogists, it's for people who are also researching any kind of historical documents or if they have questions about military records, here's what it looks like when you go to history.gov. It's very simple and Darren's gonna show you later like kind of how it works. On the homepage you can see a list of blog posts that are really helpful. They're kind of our first stop for answering questions. A lot of people are interested in finding out about it, a Native American ancestor. It's very complicated, so we have a blog post that kind of outlines first steps. And you can see a list of recent questions and then you can see a list of communities that we have. For example, we have our researchers help. It's kind of our catch-all for like, if you don't know who can best answer your question, just throw it in the researchers help and we'll redirect it. So History Hub is a platform where people can get answers from multiple sources. You can ask a question and we've got people on the site who are professors of history, amateur genealogists, like a whole community of citizen experts, people who are writing books, people who are professional researchers. It's also a knowledge base that scales and improves with time, so you can ask a question and then see how other people answered it. People can come back months later or even years later and add additional information. It's also the result of ongoing research that we did into how organizations communicate with and serve their audiences. We looked at a lot of federal agencies and also outside the federal sphere. So History Hub, the idea of it is based on trends in consumer research and it's powered by the same platform as the Apple support community. So if you have a question and you're not sure who has the answer, most likely you will Google it and if it's about a technology problem, it will take you to a community very similar to History Hub. So to kind of give you an example that is a relatable real world example that's outside of History Hub, I had a laptop that started making a disturbing noise. It's a very old MacBook. I love it, it's a workhorse, but it's very old. So started making this hideous beeping noise right before I had a big presentation where I had to like take it off. So I Googled, why is my laptop making this weird beeping noise? This is comparable to the research question that we would get in History Hub, like how do I find whatever? So I Google it and I find this is a common problem. My MacBook Pro is making a beeping noise. It was just like that, so I click the link. This is kind of comparable to the Lucky Tracin, is comparable to the researcher on History Hub and you can see that this is a common problem. So the person asked the question, why is it doing this? Within minutes they got a response from a citizen expert. This was exactly the answer to my problem and then someone provided additional information that was helpful but it didn't show up in my original search. So this was hugely successful for me. I asked a specific research question. I got an answer within minutes, seconds really. And the people who helped me were not Apple staff, which is important for the National Archives because if you ask a question of the archives and you have, it's gonna take a while for an archivist to be assigned to it and work through their workload to respond. So additionally the answer is available to anyone who Googles a similar research question. Which, so this kind of paradigm has set user expectations, not just for tech problems but for knowledge in general, for problems in general. People wanna be able to ask a specific question instead of like reading, you can, I could read the Mac manual, which I'm never gonna do ever. I wanna be able to know exactly what the problem is asking a specific question. And I wanna get help pretty immediately. I don't care who the answer comes from. And I wanna be able to ask follow-up questions and have follow-up information appended easily. And I wanna be able to search and find the answer easily because I'm not going to, like I don't wanna have to search for it. I kind of, I wanna, I don't wanna have to spend a whole lot of time finding my answer. So I'm gonna turn it over to Rebecca Collier who's gonna kind of talk about the problems that History Hub can solve for genealogists. Thank you, Kelly. So what problems can History Hub solve? At the National Archives, we respond to over 25,000, 25,000 non-personnel related questions a year on a one-to-one basis, either by email, snail mail, or telephone, plus in-person consultations to one of our research rooms. Many of the questions are similar and our responses for the same records over and over again. They may seem different to you, but they are the same for us. Here's an example on History Hub of a request that was made about a NATO operation. And since the U.S. Navy was involved, we offer deck logs for part of the information. Deck logs are one of our very popular records. But they don't contain all the information. Oops, sorry, yeah. So much for me doing this right. They'd always provide a complete answer to questions because the answers may be somewhere else. As you can see, we've referred the researchers to the Navy Historical Command, the NATO Archives for records in their custody that may contain the rest of the information that they need to complete their research. Here's another example of a request that probably won't be in the custody of NARA, but we let the researcher know that there's various universities and the university and the Library of Congress has information on their topic, so we don't leave you on limbo. Here's an example of the Library of Congress manuscript division responding to a request. And here's an example of a researcher sharing what they know with another researcher, and the researcher who got the information was very appreciative. So what are our goals with History Hub? It's an additional tool that we can use to assist researchers and genealogists in a different way for them to connect with us. Responses to requests are not limited just in our staff, but also the general public who have conducted research can also answer two things that they've already looked at and are willing to share what they know. Over time, a knowledge base will be compiled and not only will this help with customer service, but also meet the needs of knowing an answer in less time than they're currently receiving. And we hope eventually this will help decrease our reference load. And what are the most popular communities? The military records is by far the most popular and it has everything from the Revolutionary War to the present. Genealogy, which covers everything from immigration, naturalization, census, and other records that are at the National Archives, plus birth, death, and marriage records that are not. Researcher help, which is basically a catch-all, as Kelly mentioned, but it's geared to our civilian agencies such as State Department, FBI, Justice, except for those concerning Native Americans or African Americans. We have special communities set up for those questions and those topics because they have a unique community that is interested in them. And the Library of Congress has a community called Crowd on our site and they have this for their transcription project. NARA also has a transcription project under the community called Citizen Archivist. And Darren will tell you how to use History Hub. Thanks, Bucky. I'm gonna give you a quick introduction to how to search and navigate around History Hub. As Kelly showed us earlier, this is what the homepage looks like and really the main feature of the homepage is that search bar right there. That's where you can go ahead and type in your question when you first come to the site. And as this demonstrates, you just start typing in your question into the search bar and then the system will automatically start suggesting potential questions and answers that may be related to your question. So hopefully one of those suggested questions there that pop up will actually help answer your question right away so you won't have to search any further. So if you click one of those links on one of those suggested questions, I'm gonna wait for it to pop up here. It takes you down to the question page and the first thing I'd ask you is, does this help to answer your question? Yes or no, and take me back. Or you can search the entire community in more depth. So let's say maybe you're not happy with that search result. You can actually use the main search button in the top right hand corner of the page. And that will help search the entire site, so not just questions, but also blog posts and other content on the site. And then that will take you to the main search results page and that will give you options to filter your search results. You can filter it by the date, how recent it is, how relevant. You can restrict results by author or by community and help to filter your results that way. Now let's suppose that question was not answered by some of those suggested options. So then you go ahead and type your question. You say my question does not have an answer yet in this instance and then you just click the ask button. Now we're going to assume that you're probably not logged in and in order to post a question or post any content on History Hub, everyone needs to have an account. That kind of helps cut down on spam and anonymous posts and issues like that. So you'll see this prompt to either log in or create an account. And so now we'll cover really briefly how to create an account on History Hub. So you see this page where you can either log in or if you don't have an account and we'll assume that's the case here, you just go ahead and enter your email address and what will happen is the system will then send you a confirmation registration link to your email. So all you want to do is open your email and click that confirmation link and that will take you back to the site and it will provide you with the create your account page. And it has some basic fields there that you're probably familiar with, first name, last name, username, email. And you also have to create a password and one of the issues users sometimes have is creating a password that meets our requirements and because we're a federal site, we have heightened security requirements and users do sometimes have an issue with that. So there are some basic minimum requirements you need to meet. You have to have a lower case letter, uppercase letter, number, special character, minimum 12 characters. And then you have to enter the CAPTCHA code down there and again that prevents bots and other automatic registrations from spam bots and things like that. But it's a fairly simple process. And now that you're logged in, you'll see the homepage again and you'll see some custom user links in the upper right hand corner. You'll see a link that will take you to your notifications and inbox and you'll see a link that will take you to your profile and preferences page. And if you click the notifications link, this is sort of what your inbox will look like. You'll see if you're following various discussions, you'll see announcements about those. And you also get various prompts from the system such as how to update your profile and user avatar and other options like that. And if you click the profile link, you'll get options such as how to adjust your user preferences and other options. Now let's say you follow the link to customize your user profile. You have the option to upload a profile photo and that's entirely optional. You also have the option to choose a user avatar that helps sort of customize your content. And again, that's also entirely optional. You have the option of selecting from one of these sort of pre-chosen images from NARA records or you can upload your own. And again, one caveat is that all user content, whether it's a post or a photo or user avatar, all of that is all moderated for appropriateness to meet our user standards. Here's how you set your user preferences. For example, the system will email you with various notifications and you can set how often or if you get emailed at all by the system for various updates such as if your question gets answered or if there's activity on another question that you've been following. Now we wanna get to the crux of the issue which is asking that question that you had originally. So we're back on the homepage. We start typing in our question into the search box. And again, presuming there's not another question that already answers it. We'll go ahead and click that ask button and then that will take us to the question page. And this is how you write a good question post. There are some kind of tips and guidelines that we offer to help people write an accurate question that helps you get a more expedient and more accurate response. Number one you wanna use is a synced and descriptive title. Don't type your entire question into the title box. Try to summarize it as best you can. Here are some key details you wanna include and these really help us to narrow down the type of records we're looking at. Number one, who are you researching? What do you already know about them? These are really important details to share. Where did they live? When do you think they lived? Who might have been their relations and ancestors? And also super important is where have you already searched? What other archives and libraries and sources have you already checked so that we don't repeat that and make you backtrack down an avenue you've already pursued? Do you have any helpful images? Maybe you're trying to decode a census page and you can't decrypt some of the text. Maybe you wanna upload that and get some help from the community in trying to figure out what that text actually says. You can go ahead and upload a photo of that or add a link to where you found other information already. And one important aspect to note is please do not include what we call PII and that stands for Personally Identifiable Information in the Government. And really that means like social security numbers and other direct personal information such as that. That would be stripped out but it's just easier not to include it to begin with. Again, add any helpful images you might have and then there's a, you can see the small photo button and that's how you would go about adding an image to your post. And if you scroll down, you can choose the community or place where you wanna post your question. The system will default to researchers help but for the cases of this audience I assume you'd probably wanna post it in the genealogy community. But again, our moderators will usually help to sort and organize those questions when they come in and redirect them if necessary. And again, as I mentioned, all content is moderated according to our community guidelines. Questions are moderated in the order they come in depending on our workload and the volume of questions we're receiving. Moderation can take a couple of days. There is no moderation over weekends or federal holidays, days like that. Questions may be edited for clarity or again to remove content such as PII. Now getting response. Now hopefully you've asked your question and someone might have a response for you right away. So here's an example. We have a researcher question asking about naturalization records. And here you can see a response below that. And that comes in from a National Archives expert staff member. And all National Archives responses are indicated by that small little blue icon that sort of shows the columns of the main archives building. So that way you kind of know that you're getting an answer from an expert. The average response time from an expert can take a few days, often three to four working days. Now responses from other community members may come in more quickly. Again, they don't have the same workload and hopefully they might have a direct answer for you fairly soon. And once you get your answer you can go ahead and click was this helpful or not? And that sort of helps us to gauge the quality of our answers. You can click the helpful yes button. And maybe you have some additional information you need to include. So for example, you've asked a question and our expert has responded and they need more information to sort of pursue your question. So you just click that reply button and post a follow up response below that. One important issue to point out is that when you get a reply to your question you will probably get an email depending on your notification preferences. An issue users often have is they will reply directly to that email. Please don't do that. That will go into a dead end mailbox. What you need to do is come back to History Hub and post your reply on the site. Otherwise we won't receive your response. And here you can see the follow up response from the researcher with their additional information and then the follow up to the follow up from the NARA staff member. Now responding to a question. Now maybe you're on the community and you see a question where you know you've already been down that road and you can answer and provide some helpful information to the other researcher which is great. We really encourage that. We really need your help and the more information we can provide from the community the better it makes for a richer, more useful site for everybody. So you see a question that you think you can help with and you'll see the reply button down in the lower right hand corner of that question. So you just go ahead and click that and you'll see the response field and it's not unlike the post to question field. A lot of the same functionality. You can embed links, you can embed helpful images and anything that you think will help answer the question to the other researcher. Now navigating History Hub. We've seen a bit of the site already so we'll show you just a few more aspects to kind of help acclimate you. Again, this is the homepage just below the search bar and you'll see a list of recent blog posts. You'll see a list of the most recent questions and on the right hand side you'll see a list of all the various communities. Again, which Becky covered such as researchers help and military records and genealogy which again is probably the community of most interest to this audience. So you go ahead and click that and we dive into the genealogy community and this is what that homepage looks like. You'll see a list again of the most recent questions on the left. You'll see a shortcut to the ask a genealogy question field and then you'll also see a list of featured content which is often recent blog posts and we'll put up blog posts to kind of provide more detailed information on certain popular research topics to provide users a little more information so we try to list those in the right hand side there. Now maybe you want to filter the content a little more and see what else is going on in the genealogy community. You can click the content button and this will show all the content and you can filter that. You'll see various filters there. You can also see a list listing the views and the number of replies that each piece of content has received so you can kind of gauge the popularity, see where every really active conversation is happening that you want to help out with. Now getting help and technical support. Issues do pop up and we're always available to help and we do have a community set up to sort of provide some basic technical responses and help deal with various issues that you might encounter. So if you go to the technical help and support community, again you'll see a list of recent help topics that have popped up. You'll see a question bar and you'll also see a list of featured content and that really covers a lot of the common issues that users might encounter and hopefully that will help answer your issue right away. That's not always the case so if you need additional help, for example maybe you're unable to create your account so you can't even get to the point where you can post a question. You have an account where you're having trouble logging in. You're having difficulty creating a post or also maybe you represent an organization and you're interested in sort of partnering with History Hub maybe getting your organization engaged on community on History Hub and we'd love to hear about that. Please contact us. But if you have any of those issues please go ahead and email us at historyhub at nar.gov and that's purely just for these types of questions. Please do not email us a research question. We won't be able to respond. So please join us. Participation is open to anyone. Please sign up for an account. Ask your question. Please help us to answer someone else's question. We would love to have your help. We would really encourage that. So please go ahead and join us so you can visit us at history.gov and I'd like to see if there's any questions. Thank you so much. To all three of you, thank you very much for your presentation. We do have some questions that have come in from our online audience starting at the very beginning as soon as you started talking. So we have a question one. What platform is used by hub librarians in data collection? Example, Excel or specialized software? So was there a particular platform that you're using for data collection? I'm not sure I understand the questions but if the person wants to clarify, there's not data collection but the underlying software is Jive. It's the same or RA they were bought recently and it's the same software that's used by Apple support community and I think a couple of the other bigger tech companies. So all of the data resides on History Hub. That's helpful. Thank you. Do you have another question that's related? It says, can a History Hub widget be integrated into a website or app? That's a cool question. It does generate RSS feeds so if you're able to embed from an RSS feed, it doesn't have a native app. Do you wanna add anything to that? No, if you browse archives.gov, you'll see a few instances of the RSS widget where we've got embedded questions relevant to those certain pages. So on the genealogy page, you'll see a list of current History Hub genealogy questions and that's really just coming from an RSS feed so that's able to be embedded almost anywhere. There's not sort of a more dynamic widget which allows you to ask questions from a separate site. Okay, thank you. Because all three of you are up there, our audience is asking you to speak a little bit louder. I'm sorry. So go on to the next question. This is generally, there's all kinds of questions that you get and this person asks, are there old maps, quote unquote, old maps available for states like New Mexico that show the boundary changes for that state? So is that the type of question that you can have answered on History Hub? We can actually, yes and no, will guide you to cartographic, the cartographic branch that's out at the National Archives. If the record was of the change of boundary or whatever was done through federal records, then they should have the map. But other than that, we might look on Google and see if there's a map available there and give you a choice of how to find it. So that's an example of a research question that you might ask and that's an example of a research question you might receive. We don't have the data on History Hub. We're answering questions about the National Archives records and holdings and where you might find your information. Unless it's already scanned and put on a catalog and we'll look for there too and if we find a map or whatever that will answer your question, we'll put the URL into the response so that you can find it. Thank you for that thorough answer. I'd also like to put in a plug at this time for our session number six. It's at 3 p.m. Eastern as part of the Genealogy Fair. We're gonna have James Moon speaking about land records, in particular about Homestead Act. But if you're still with us at that time, you might wanna check in with us again and ask that same question. Going back to the questions specific for the History Hub, we have a question here, a question about questions. How many questions have been asked? Are public reports available on History Hub metrics? Do we have those available publicly? I'm not sure if we have them available publicly and how many questions, whoops, we'll just start tipping that forward. We've had, let's see, how many so far? Yeah, a couple thousand questions so far. Wow, actually over the past, we started this in January of 2016 and during our first year, we got roughly 200 questions. The following year, we got about 400 questions and in 2018, we got about 800 questions. This past year, up to this point, we have gotten 1600. So it seems to be doubling and so we're very happy at that and those answers and the questions are still in History Hub, so if you ask the question, even if it was answered two or three years ago, it will come up and you can see the response. Okay. So a couple thousand. A couple of thousand? A handful of thousands. It sounds like it's growing exponentially. I would think it's over 2,000. Yeah, it's over 2,000. Okay, thank you. Going on to the next question that we have from our online audience. They say, I'm seeing in the genealogy overview and in quotes, seeking records on name, are those names compiled into a list? So again, in the genealogy overview, are those names compiled into a list? They're not compiled into a list, but they are indexed by the search and by Google. So if you're thinking that there's a list of, here's a number of people who have been searched, that doesn't exist now. Okay, I'm going to give our online audience a moment to see if any more questions come up. Oh, here we go. I have something. I get frequent questions from second or third generation farm workers whose relatives came into the U.S. under the radar during World War I and II. Can you suggest resources? So again, resources for second and third generation farm workers whose relatives came into the U.S. under the radar during World War I and World War II. That's an interesting question. And usually, the person that I will send that question to to get her ideas are Elizabeth Burns. And she has a session later on today. And so if you'd like to re-say that question to Elizabeth, she'll be able to give you some better ideas than I can off the cuff. But that's also a good example of a question to ask on History Hub where it can be routed to an archivist who can help. Okay. One of the first questions you got, and I think it's worth reiterating. They asked, is the History Hub curated content or is it more like Wiki where any participant can update the content? It's not like Wiki. It doesn't operate like, you wouldn't be able to go back and edit someone else's response. It's more like a support community. So not a Wiki, but a support community where you would have someone ask a question and then their question exists as a discrete kind of thing. And then you can have answers from NARA staff or from the public or from citizen experts. So the information that is kind of grown from the question, not as a discrete article. Okay. And you can go back and edit your own request and you can also edit your own reply, but only the writer can do that. Okay. Oh, that's helpful to know. And then responding to another question, someone was asking about finding family in Civil War. Again, I would say that's a good kind of, if you can make a specific question for the online audience there, then ask your question on History Hub. So going back to the actual questions here. Are the questions in History Hub organized by National Archives locations and documents held by the locations or by research topics? Currently it's arranged by topic. And so we pick broad topics that people can do rather than worrying about what the archive structure is. Yeah, the archive structure is meaningless to most of the general public. We probably care, but like we at the National Archives care more than the public. So if you ask a military question, you won't know what part of NARA it comes from until the response is done. And we'll say you need to go to these records or to these records and this unit has them. That is helpful because if you're not with the National Archives, you'll hear us referring to record groups, so that can be confusing. So it is helpful to have it under topics. So going back to our questions. The question is what is the Library of Congress crowd community on History Hub? It is so cool. If you get a chance to check it out, please do. They have this transcription tool that is for transcribing their records. And basically it's a community of Library of Congress transcribers who they're just, you can sign up for an account on the Library of Congress's site yourself and transcribe their documents. And it's great because, and also for, please do for the National Archives as well. But it helps because a lot of these, when you digitize records, transcription is not always part of that. It usually isn't part of that. So we rely on people to kind of, the benefit of transcribing is that it becomes something that's searchable. It's more portable information. Yeah, so the Library of Congress, they have a really great community of people who are actively engaged in transcribing and then talking to each other about the problems that they're having or if they have questions. It's a pretty cool community. And if you look at 18 and 19th century records, the handwriting can be unusual. And the spelling can be unusual, especially prior to 1850s. So the transcriptions help people understand the contents of the records a lot better. Okay, so I want you to listen closely to this next question that I have because it's about paper and record keeping. How can we research black Americans suffering from paper genocide, records not on paper, who cannot trace their past from the early 1800s? That is a great question to ask on History Hub as well. Because that's the kind of question that is so interesting and kind of broad and it's not really, you really want to be able to devote some time to it. And also on NARA's website itself, we have a black history section of our website. If you kind of click down and go to where it says African Americans and it is a wonderful source that archivists from the national archives have put together. And really, they have explained how you can find things, especially about slavery and about your family if you're trying to figure it out. And also there have been places that have done oral histories and all sorts of rich material that is available that may not just be in the written form. Okay, that's terrific. I'm glad that we had that question come in. I think you'll love this next question for the History Hub. Is there a need for transcribers? Why yes, there is. Not on History Hub, but there is always a need for transcribers. The National Archives and the Library of Congress both have communities set up around people who are interested in transcribing. Go to Citizen Archivist and you can find links there. That would be amazing. And you can go through the History Hub community to get there. Okay, thank you so much. We love transcribers. So a very specific question. I think you'll again refer people to go to the History Hub community. They ask, on census from 1840s, how can you tell if the information is correct or not? Oh, well, you have to remember the people who wrote this or taking down information that has been given to them orally. They've went to different census, house to house and the census taker actually wrote things down. Now they were supposed to transcribe and use the same kind of handwriting and they had to take classes to do that so that it all looks the same. But they wrote down what people said. So if someone called their parent Peggy instead of Margaret, it may show up as Peggy in the 1840 census and in the 1850 census it might be Margaret. So there are some adaptations that you have to make. Sometimes people didn't ask how to spell a name or if they did, they didn't understand the spelling and so they kind of can get creative but that is the fun of working in the census records. So following up on that, we get this kind of question all the time about the census. So the question is, we know a spelling error has been made on the census. How can we notify National Archives to make the correction or is the misspelling just part of the legal record? It's part of the legal record but you know they are transcribing the census and so if you notice in the transcription of the census that something is spelled wrong, that can be changed. That's a great answer. Yes, you can always put that in the transcription. So our next question is very specific. They ask, I know most World War I records were lost. But where can World War I military information be found? And it continues. So World War I military information, specifically is there information on Camp Jackson, South Carolina and soldiers who had the Spanish flu in 1918? That is very specific. That's a good question and yes, there are records about the Spanish flu and specifically in that area. If they're talking about soldiers, they're talking about the army and yes, the army records were burned but the Marine Corps and the Navy were not touched. They, out in St. Louis, they have gathered records immediately from the military and records that were normally not considered permanent or saved such as payroll records and what have you and so they can find as much as they can about an individual. So yes, that is a perfect question to answer on History Hub and we'll be glad to tell you where you might be able to find some resources. Okay, you are such a generalist, Ms. Becky Collier. Thank you. We are so lucky. It comes from working on History Hub for four years. Yeah, we're lucky to have you there to answer so many different questions that are not actually specific about the History Hub. So thank you. This is a researcher question about coming in person. If I come to the National Archives in Washington, DC, will I be able to obtain records at any time or do I have to make an appointment and if able to acquire records, what form of payment do I need for any records? Oh. So an appointment and is there a cost? It's always best to contact the unit that you're going to visit prior to coming. Don't come cold, ask your question, make sure that they have the records here on site if you're going to come and you want to look at the actual records. There's also depends on whether records have been microfilmed and what have you, you may not be able to touch the actual records. So please contact the unit first and they will tell you how, you know, to come and what times records can be pulled. Right now, I believe we're on a one pool of it and it is not on a schedule. So it's best to talk to the Archives in London staff first before you come. But you should do that to no matter what part of the National Archives you go to. Please contact them first. Whether you do it through Inquirer, whether you do it through History Hub or whether you write them a letter or call. It's very important to do that so you're not wasting your time when you come to visit us. We know how important it is and we know that it can be expensive to come to the various sites. So, you know, that's why we ask you to contact us first. And we do have a number of blog posts on History Hub about how to prepare for your in-person visit. And also, my co-worker Amber just posted in the chat a website that has all of our location information so you know where to get that information on who to contact. Let's see, I think one more question came in. Okay, I'm just gonna go ahead and read it. On land owned, how do you go about how far back it was owned by the family? But if the family is related, I'm not quite sure I understand. You have a whole land records group on History Hub that you could post your question there. But if it's land, for instance, if the place where you live right now, your county will have documentation about the deed for that land and then you can go backwards beginning at the county records. And then if that original person had gotten it from like a federal bounty land grant or what have you then, it will take you there. So there's a way to do it, but it's not necessarily at the National Archives. Okay, thank you so much. Another question has come in about original documents being sent in for the census, specifically Yakima Valley Libraries Archives has original documents of the census taker for the Yakima Reservation from the early 1900s. I've never found these online. Should these be sent to the National Archives? That's a great question sign up for a account on History Hub and ask it and we'll route it to the, we'll find an answer. Okay, at this point I don't have any more questions, but if you think of something later or we just didn't get to your question because they were coming fast and furious, please submit it to our email account, historyhubatnara.gov. And for that, thank you. If our presenters, like I just said, if we didn't get to your questions send it to historyhubatnara.gov. Videos and handouts will remain available after the event from this YouTube page and from the fairs webpage. We will begin again on the hour. Thank you very much. Welcome back. My name is Amber Forrester and I'm the Archival Training Coordinator for Research Services. This is session number two of the 2019 Virtual Genealogy Fair. It's for all skill levels and entitled preserving personal collections. Our speaker is Sarah Holmes. She will discuss guilt-free ways to preserve your own family's collections by improving environment and housing of papers, photos, and other materials. Ms. Holmes works as a Management and Program Analyst at the National Archives in St. Louis. Welcome to the broadcast, Sarah Holmes. Hey, Louis. This presentation is intended to help you with decision-making processes of taking care of your family's own physical history. If it moves to slide two, please. The first thing you're going to do is to take a look at what you have. You may have photographs, movies, letters, newspaper clippings, memory books, scrapbooks, much more than that even. These are things that may have been passed on to you. They may have been things that you have kept yourself out because of sentimental reasons. These are items that are shown here that are in my own collection. I have damaged and re-rated photographs. I even have an envelope to keep my fragments in. I have different kinds of paper that you see here. There are all sorts of different kinds of things. The oversized photographs can really be a challenge to store at your home. And these are things that I haven't gotten around to really dealing with properly. So these are kind of some of my odd balls here. Any time you've got something that's in odd shape that makes it difficult. Slide three, please. Now, I'm trained as a book and paper conservator and I've been interested in my family history ever since I was a kid. So you might think my entire collection looks something like these pictures. The box on the left has photographs and polyester sleeves. And they're great for letting people handle and view the photos without getting fingerprints or scratches on the images. And my box of slides here, it's a wonderful set of boxes that fits into a larger box so that I can keep hundreds of slides all together. Now, one thing you might notice if you take a closer look here is that I don't even have labels inside these. They're just stacked in there. What I've done so far with this is to get things housed pretty much by size and type. My slides have dividers as I've sorted them by date when they have dates, at least. And fortunately for me, a lot of the photographs have been identified on the back. But at this point, what you see here is that basically I'm getting things housed more by size and type and we're trying to get them housed nicely. And these boxes are, as we call them, your archival boxes, archival housings. But I really need more time to get them organized. Slide four, please. And that's really the harsh reality for all of us. Organizing and housing to preserve collections can take a lot of time. And it can get pricey if your goal is to house everything in archival storage boxes. And that's especially true when you have all sorts of different sizes and different materials. Now, this is some more of my personal collection of family things. And there at the top is a Fruit of the Month Club box. And then I've got some of my dad's old cigar boxes. And I've even got this cute little keepsake box down in the bottom corner. It's cute, but it's not made of archival materials. I don't even know for sure what it's made of as far as its quality. What is important at this point is that the boxes are clean, they've never gotten wet, and they provide good structural support to what they're holding. And even that Fruit of the Month box meets those standards. It may have held Fruit once, but it's clean, it's odorless, and all the other boxes are the same. They've been used to hold photos and family things for a long time, to be honest. Though I'm gradually working to move them into better containers. You can't even see a stack of the photos please in that cigar box from when I was working with them. Now, here is the number one rule to know. You want to keep your collections in a stable environment. Quality containers like you saw on the previous slide will add to longevity. But don't feel guilty if you haven't overcome the need for more time and more money to buy archival quality containers. That the truth is, NARA and all of our colleagues in other institutions struggle with this at our workplaces as well. This is those boxes are a lot bigger and the number is a lot larger. So let's start with some top tips in caring for your collection so you can understand what I mean. Now, of course, here's the first one. Control your environment. Temperature and humidity are the big important factors. The wrong environment can cause mold to grow and damage your heirlooms. At high in temperature, high in humidity and low air circulation. Make sure that you're keeping your most precious items out of basements and attics, garages or barns. Places where temperature and humidity tend to fluctuate drastically. You want to avoid areas that are near showers, bathrooms, near your kitchen, near your central heating and cooling appliances. And ideally you stick to an internal wall whether than an external wall because again, more fluctuations are going to occur when you've got an external wall nearby. We don't recommend sealing things into the airtight plastic containers. You'll be sealing in whatever environment they have and they may not even be as airtight as you think. Do take note of where your pipes run. Pipe breaks, leaks, even simply condensation from pipes can cause bad problems and create bad environments very quickly. And do you have mold that is a common problem? If you open a box and see splotches on things that look fuzzy, something that looks like that picture on the left side and that mold has actually even made it turn polky because it's been there colonizing for so long. If you smell mildew even if you don't see mold then you may want to be contacting the conservator for help. Now when mold grows in full bloom it does tend to follow areas where water has dripped. So it's not unusual to see like you see in that second picture there that shows the mold growing in kind of lines. That's where the water had created channels. And slide six, please. Do try and make sure that you're keeping everything off of the floor. The floor is going to be vulnerable to water puddling when things go wrong. Ideally you will have shelving that is metal powder coated shelving braced as well. And that you're not overhanging boxes over the edge in any way. That also helps to protect if there's a shelving over it in case something happens above to bring water in. Now at home I know it's often common that you're using wood shelves. You can find liners for wood shelving in your conservation suppliers that will provide something of a buffer. You wanna do that because the wood is going to be off gassing things that will actually cause chemical reactions within your collections. Slide seven, please. And another top fit for a potential problem, pests. Pests can do permanent damage to your records. Just look at what the termites did here to these papers. You want to be sure that you're stealing possible entryways to your home and definitely to your storage area. Keep your storage area clean so that it will help you monitor it for any potential problems. You can use sticky traps to help monitor. We don't recommend using pesticides. They can be damaging to your health as well potentially. And remember that warning about keeping records away from humid wet areas just to simply control the environment and prevent mold. That can be a huge help with pest control as well because they're going to be attracted to those areas. And just as an example, I once used closet shelves for books in an old apartment that I had. And this wall that they had shelves were all backed up to a bathroom. That was a big mistake. There was a higher humidity there and it drew silverfish. So my books gave them wonderful times and feeding grounds until I realized what was happening. And remember not all pest damage comes from insects. You can be rodents. You can have mice nesting. And our pets can potentially damage things as well. You may have antique furniture that you inherited that you want to be sure that your dog and cat understands not to destroy. And you may also need to be aware that there are materials like photos and book coverings that can actually have sparkles and gelatin in them. And that's actually attractive to pets. So make sure that they don't get a chance to sample them because they may decide they taste wonderful. Now, if you have a lot of pests, then you do want to isolate the affected boxes and contact the conservator for guidance and treatment. Slide eight, please. Now, light. Light is another problem. You want to keep your objects out of light. Light damage comes from the rays of the sun as well as from the heat that it generates. Avoid direct light such as across from a window where you're getting a lot of sunlight. So recent lighting can have harmful light and heat waves as well. Any light can be damaging. Even if you're using modern LED lights, you're not going to be safe from light damage. It is prominent. Do consider making copies of any photographs or documents that you would like to have out on display so you can have a display copy that you don't have to worry about with the original safely storage. Slide nine, please. And dust is also a big problem. It holds moisture and it attracts pests and it's also acidic. And all of these things can speed degradation of any object. So you want to avoid throwing items that are near events or other places that accumulate quickly. You can brush away dust with a lint-free cloth. We don't recommend using commercial cleaners or waxes or oils. If anything, just use a little bit of water only. If you house things inside containers, that will certainly help prevent dust buildup on the objects that you're saving. You can see in this picture, there was a photograph that had glass broken and where dust settled within those cracks damaged the surface of the photograph. Slide 10, please. Now, storage, this is a big one. Now, in the conservation world, we tend to call storage housing. And we've got enclosures and folders and boxes and a whole variety of different things. Now, most boxes that you just simply obtain from various sources have an unknown content that would definitely include my forgot the month blocks. The worry in using those is the possibility of acids and oxidants that will off gas and damage your treasures. This is where the term acid-free comes from. Now, it's important to understand that pH levels don't stay static all the time. They over the years, things will tend to become more acidic. And this is just one of the things that you need to be concerned about in housing. When there's doubt about materials, do try and replace with something that you feel is more trustworthy. But at the same time, do be aware that there's no standard for what is archival or acid-free. So when you're purchasing things, do look closely at the vendors and how they present themselves. It may not be something that you just simply want to buy cheap because it says acid-free and there's nothing else that the vendor provides for information. If you're looking online, you can look for keywords like archival supplies, archival products, acid-free. And you will find things that are described as having an alkaline reserve or being buffered. And this in particular is what's referred to as acid-free. They're often referring to a calcium content and they may even state what content that is that is going to have some of the alkaline reserve to counter acid. Now for photo storage, you can look for enclosures that test the PAT, the Photographic Activity Test. Now this is an international standard test for evaluating specifically the interactions between photo images and the enclosures in which they're stored. There is a standard PAT for black and white photos and then there's a different one for color. Now using materials that test the standard one doesn't necessarily mean that it's appropriate for color. So do be aware of that little catch. Now here is a big hint. If you can't simply go out and buy a bunch of archival supplies and have things all at once, you can buy a ring of alkaline acid-free paper just get regular size. You can get legal size if you want or even larger. Maybe get some folders as well if you have more money to spend but you're not ready to do all the boxes. You can use that paper to line boxes that aren't archival. Now don't tape them to the side or anything, just lay them in place. You can also use the paper to interweave items and the folders to let you start grouping things. Do understand that, you know, as I said, PH doesn't stay static over the years that just having a piece of paper in there if you're using it for years, you might actually wanna swap out that paper with new paper because the paper you left in there is absorbing essence potentially from both the box as well as the materials within it. Now if you have all of your materials in a archival box with an alkaline reserve and archival folders and any extra enclosures that you've got then you've got more of a full cocoon for all of your contents than you do if you're just simply lining a box with the paper. But again, if you have a poor environment, there's no box, there's no enclosure that's going to protect your contents from the bad environment and the damage that temperature and humidity will bring. Slide 11, please. You want to be sure that your housings fully support what they contain. So be sure when you're using folders that they fit inside. Don't cut or trim documents. Now, if something was already folded, you may be able to reuse that fold. Ideally, you would keep things flat because folds do indicate that fibers have been broken and that can lead to loss and tearing there. Now, if something's oversized, be sure that you roll it onto an archival safe tube and you can wrap it with alkaline buffered paper. You do want a tube that is about two inch longer on both sides than what the item is that's rolled. And you can do that for paper and textiles as well, anything that can roll. Slide 12, please. Another thing to remember is not to overstuff your boxes either. If you've got overstuffed boxes and any time that you're reaching in or refiling a box, you're going to be causing damage and wear and tear. So if it's swollen and the lid doesn't quite fit, you're overstuffing the box. You need another box or a bigger box. Slide 13, please. Now, do watch out for problem material because even if you're storing your paper with other papers and your photos with other photos, you may notice that some things are farther along the path of degradation than others. Their acid content can potentially cause chemical transfer. News clippings are a big culprit of this. And you do want to try and you can interleave paper in between newspaper clippings. And definitely if you've got like a newspaper clipping and a letter, you might want a buffer of a sheet of paper in between them. And photographs can also create something similar where you can have mirror images like in this example where the content of the photo emulsion is actually what is chemically reacted over time. So you do want to be careful what you're putting up against next to each other when you don't have interleaving material. And again, if this happens to be a photograph that you're concerned about, do use materials from past the PAT. Slide 14, please. Now books. Books you want to be sure that you're storing or that you're not stressing their structures. If you've got a large volume like an atlas or a big plat book or possibly even one of those huge county biography collections, you want to consider whether you need to store them horizontally. If when it stands, it pulls the textbook down like you see in this picture, then you're stressing the structure of the book and you want to house it horizontally. Now smaller books, small, medium ones can easily be shown. It's best to store with the same size together so they're supporting each other. We want to avoid having a volume that reams and that will cause distortion and the covers will lose their shape. And you can see in this picture here, there's a line that is showing how most of the volumes are nice and parallel to that line, but that last one is leaning a bit and that one is vulnerable. Slide 15, please. Now handling. We want to be sure that we're handling our materials well, not just storing them. The number one thing is to make sure that you have nice, clean hands and a nice, clean work area. Avoid using lotions or hand sanitizers. If you really do have to use them, then make sure that you've given enough time for them to be fully absorbed into your skin so that you're not going to be handling things and rubbing off the lotion to contaminate the surface. Now for paper materials, we don't recommend gloves. The gloves will actually prevent you from handling things well, especially picking up a single page, turning a page in a book, and cotton gloves in particular will have fibers that will cast on the paper and it will actually be more likely to tear than if you're not using gloves. Now for photographs and metals, you could very well want to use gloves because you don't want to leave fingerprints on those materials. Nitro gloves, just like those that your doctor's office can be used for that. Slide 16, please. So how are you going to prevent things like getting scratches, like on this photograph from happening when we handle our materials? One very important thing to consider is the area that you use in handling your material. Be sure that you're not spinting yourself on space. You need a lot of room to work with one item at a time. And be sure to remember that your most important tool is to work with that nice, clean, flat surface. It's not ideal to be working in midair if you're putting things into enclosures. Just please, you want to use that flat surface. Slide 17, please. Now, photographs with them are going to be particularly susceptible to handling. So you can use polyester sleeves. They're excellent in being able to let you view the photograph while you're handling it. There are also other types of envelopes, paper envelopes, glycine that RPAT approved and can be used. They might be good choices for heavier things, like things on cabinet cards. You can see here that you can also put slides. I personally chose a box as you saw in the earlier slide in the presentation. But you can certainly find other ways to store slides using sleeves and binders. Again, be sure that the binder you use is of known content and archival material and not something questionable if you can avoid that. So there are a lot of different options for being able to store materials. Slide 18, please. Now, if you're working with old albums, especially these magnetic albums, my family was big on magnetic albums. And you know, they have that adhesive that holds the photos in place. Slide 18, please. Now, if you're working with old albums, especially these magnetic albums, it holds the photos in place. And know that you can look online for suggestions on removing photos from these albums. But I really do suggest contacting your conservator if you've got this kind of album or anything that is adhered with some kind of adhesive. It's very easy to damage photos when they get removed from these pages. You can see that the separation of the lines of adhesive in here. I'm kind of lucky that some of what we use in magnetic albums were actually just friends of copied photographs. So these are the only ones we have left in my own collection. Slide 19, please. Now, objects can certainly be more difficult to decide how to handle. Now, for things that are metal, you want to be sure that you're storing them in some way so that they don't touch each other. But there's some kind of space you might choose separating them into cloth bags. I know these examples here are NARA so that they're done by somebody who has had a lot of experience and has access to foam and other materials to use and making enclosures. You could very well consider getting a conservator to help you to make enclosures in housings like these. But you can find materials that will also help you do your own at home from archival suppliers. Now, silver in particularly is a tricky item a lot. If you're very likely tarnish, you don't want to polish the silver. Any time that you're polishing that silver, you're actually removing silver from the object. So do avoid bringing silver into any long-term contact with protein-based materials. And that's going to be materials like wool or silk or leather. If you're looking for using with the silver, you can get sulfur-absorbing materials that will do the opposite of what those proteinaceous materials do. And you can find these from vendors. They come in varieties such as charcoal cloth, silver safe. There are also plastic stones that are copper impregnated with the silver. There are a lot of things that you can potentially find a look at. So if you've got silver or other metals, get them out. Get an idea of how much and what size you've got and take a look at what's available to archival in these Zine supply catalogs. Slide 20, please. No textiles. It is best for new textiles from the Zerlun feeder chest as well as making sure that you're not keeping them in this plastic cover or even if your wedding dress came with that. It's not the long-term storage material. You want to hang items with cotton padded hangers and place them in a textile cloth garment bag. You can store most textiles and boxes well easily. You will keep them flat but pad them with cotton batting wherever there are folds or creases because you don't want those to stay flat. If you don't pad those folds, the creases will eventually become tears and you may see that that's where the most rare is, where things were folded. And you can certainly place quilts and coverlets and boxes as well. Slide 21, please. Now, electronic and magnetic devices. Of course, these are increasingly more a part of our lives and in so many different varieties. Now, these come with hard plastic cases typically. If the cases are broken, then just replace them with whatever plastic cases are available online or in stores. But do be sure that you're keeping these stored in their own boxes away from paper or textiles or metals. It is best ideally to store all of these things separately. Slide 22, please. Now, while you're working with storing and housing this is a good time to remind you not to attach things together. You can use folders to keep things together, but you do not want to be using tape or rubber bands or metal fasteners of any kind. These are things that will degrade over time. At the same time, don't try and remove fasteners or tape on your own. If you remove the plastic carrier on tape then you're actually going to speed up the degradation that will occur because you are bringing it up into the air. When you're using scrapbooks or photo albums don't use clues or tapes of any kind. You can find photo corners that you can use. Now you can see in these pictures that tape itself will potentially degrade in various different ways. Sometimes it will discolor and yellow. Sometimes it will desiccate. If it's fallen off then you can let it fall off but don't force off a carrier that's not already totally desiccated off. Now in that lower picture you see an example where the tape has actually become stickier and oozed out. That is a particular sticky mess that you might want to use better to a conservator to work with. Slide 23 please. Now here's the other part of working with modern electronic information. How are we going to keep all this stuff where we have it year after year after year? Now you can take a tip from locks. Locks of copies keep stuff safe which started at Stanford University. Now you want to have multiple copies spread them around give them to cousins aunts, uncles whoever you can find you to take copies. The other part of this is that you're going to want to be converting to new forms of media often. And you're likely going to be different forms of media. It's very common to see these flash drives now, but will they be around in five years the way they are now? Maybe not. So at least every 10 years make copies of the media and again spread copies around. Just because you have something digitized doesn't mean that you need to get rid of your original. So be sure that you have those originals in case you ever go back to them. And file naming as well. We have an organization plan for file naming and includes metadata from who, what, when, where basically. I mean just a date at a minimum is going to be so helpful. Slide 24 please. Now for things that you want to digitize yourself photographs, letters it's best to photograph these facing up rather than having them face down on a flatbed scanner. Definitely avoid any kind of machinery that has the key parts to it. And don't use auto feeders. They will jam. Slide 25 please. Now when it comes to audio visual material whether it's magnetic tape audio, video DVDs, CDs whatever you've got old home sound then these are things that you may want simply need to go to a professional because of the equipment that is involved in transferring them. There will likely be problems with sound, with the film, something that needs to be addressed as they are being transferred. So this can get technical very quickly. You want to be sure that you work with a vendor that is willing to talk with you, answer questions and will go at length about what you want. What you want to do first is to get a pilot test done get a sample done and that's going to be a way for you to know that the end result is what you are expecting and that the vendor knows that you understand what they're expecting to do. You want to ask them where they're doing the digitization. Is it in house? Are they sourcing it out? Where does it go? How is it stored? You want me to think in terms of the fact that you're getting a file not so much about a disk. You need to ask about file types in particular. Some are good for archiving but others are good for sharing. You probably want to get both. If you get one copy with the highest possible resolution that's going to get a lot of digital space requirements and then you can get a compressed one for file sharing. You may be doing something like getting an mp3 for sharing and a way for archiving. Do talk with your vendor about what they offer and how they get used and make sure you understand the different file types that they're talking about. Things can get really technical quickly. You may be talking with your vendor for adjustments for audio tapes and reels. You need different size needles for vinyl records. You may have old record recordings out there. Things that are born digital can be particularly difficult to determine what you want to do with. Things like emails, electronic journals. You can easily print those out but you will need to remember this. You're keeping the electronic files that you're going to have to transfer them to new digital formats. If you've got a disk somewhere that has a WordPress file, you're not going to be able to pop it into your current laptop that runs on this board. Slide 26, please. Now, we've covered a lot of territory here and maybe beginning to get an idea of how you can set your own priorities. Number one, as always, the environment. Be sure that you have the best possible environment. A good place to be storing them and preventing insects and other pests from damaging them. Now, once you have that you can move on to step two and work to improve your housing as much as you possibly can. Now, you're going to be determining a lot of personal priorities. No one's plan for preservation is going to be the same. There are factors that you'll need to be thinking about that may pertain personally to you alone. Now, one thing that I'm thinking about more of my own collection is that different parts of what I had be passed on to different people. And that makes a huge difference in housing and organization. And that is one reason that I'm looking more at the enclosure level like you saw, getting photographs into enclosure and I'm actually going more by size. My next big step will be organizing it into segments. And for me, working with the enclosures first is to be able to determine how many boxes I'm going to need. And do also consider getting in touch with coverings. These are very distant ones and that can help determine priorities. You may have a photograph that's very special like I've got a copy of here that's shown and this is a photograph just as an example here that's got a big crease across the front. It's missing a corner and this is a copy of a picture of my great-grandfather whose parents and 17 siblings back in Norfolk, England. Now, it's not the only copies that exist but to find the other copies you actually do have to contact cousins that stayed in England. We also have cousins in Australia so you do have to reach out if you want to see if there are duplicates and of course the joy of finding pictures you never knew existed will happen at the same time. So of course I have my copy I'm never going to part with it it has a lot of intrinsic value to me. It's the copy that emigrated with him when he came to make a new home in Iowa and it's been an awesome family since then but for digital reproduction to have it available to even more people than had original copies a different copy is actually a better choice and of course if you're working with siblings and cousins and you've got things like old home films or is that possibility that you can pull resources and work with a vendor together and get multiple copies since everyone has a current copy that is a great access copy and then you've also got copies that you can preserve as master copies. So there are going to be a lot of different things to potentially think about in looking at your collection. Slide 27 please. So there will be a question and answer period here after I'm done talking but if you're like me your best questions come well after the time that you're talking about it. So one thing that you can do is to take a look at the National Archives website preservation pages and you can reach those at www.archives.gov slash preservation you can also look at the website www.culturalheritage.org and get all sorts of information about conservation and how to locate conservators. There is a tremendous amount of information online that is available to you and of course you can certainly email us and the preservation services department at preservation at nara.gov So when you're home facing all these piles of photos and letters and home phones do seek these out to get answers to questions. Now slide 28 please. Well thank you very much for your time today. Do you have any questions? Thank you so much for your presentation Sarah we have a lot of questions so we're going to dive right in. First can you clarify what's the difference between acidic and acidic? They're basically two very synonymous terms there. The acidic will probably be seen in more technical versions while you'll see more of the acid referred to in more consumer friendly versions. Okay thank you for that. What is a safe place to keep photos and paper documents that does have air circulation as you recommended? Could you repeat that? What's a safe place to keep records that has good air circulation? Well they you want everything to be in the southern environment as you possibly can. Now they're it's going to vary from house to house as far as where you have it if you're trying to get the residents but basically you're going to be trying to do as I had said something that won't fluctuate and by fluctuate I do mean that within a day's time that it's not going to fluctuate from having the air conditioner go off in the middle of July and go from cool 70 degrees to 90 degrees. They are milder and that's okay to have but the physical storage is basically the primary issue getting that temperature and humidity and dry space. If we are scanning documents to preserve them what's the most stable file format to save those scanned images? Now that's a tough one because that's going to vary and again if you're doing it for yourself digital storage is also part of the equation. You may want to try and do uncompressed TIS files but again if you have a lot and you have a lot of uncompressed TIS you're going to find pretty quickly that it actually takes a tremendous amount of space so that you can be potentially looking at are you using your computer space what kind of backup do you have do you have space on the cloud that you consider safe so I would really say that digital storage will have a lot to do with what you use as what you consider your archival master it may not be as the ideal full uncompressed that large institutions use. We have a couple specific questions about conservation and preservation how do you remediate cigarette smoke smell on old paper documents? To remediate what? Cigarette smoke smell? Oh, smells and odors you can deal with that by creating the foot be one kind that you can use one of those plastic containers that have the tight lid what you would do in that case is to set up something you can get you can get kitty litter there are other materials based typically that are odor absorbers you can even use baking soda potentially and put that at the bottom of the container and then use some kind of creating something that lifts it up so that you're not putting in a direct contact and then put the letters whatever you've got above that and close it and give it time and they take days or weeks to be able to remove odor in this manner but you can do that and it can be something done at home just be sure that you're monitoring it and that you don't forget that you put this in a field container and find out after the fact that something's happened Thank you so much another one of our viewers has some 100 year old newspapers that are rolled tightly how can they unroll them and relax the paper I see so with that you've probably likely have something that's brittle um it's paper can really have tremendous differences even something that was made the same day depending on how it was made in fact it's it's a little bit different it's a little bit different depending on how it was manufactured I'm assuming that this is something brittle that's why it's more of a concern um you can humidify the paper humidification for things that are printed is typically almost always fine I would be concerned if you've got annotations, letters or something because humidification can cause problems with some media but you can use the humidification set up that would allow you to relax the paper before you unroll it so that you inject some humidity into that now if you've got something rolled and that's going to be long you may be looking to get a container even a garbage can there will be some places that you can find online and there should even be some links from our website that would give you some diagrams of this but you would be placing some water or even wet water at the bottom of the container and then like I was suggesting with the odor reduction have something like chicken crate go to the hardware store and get the cube light cravings that they use or the lights or full-wrestling lighting something like that to be sure that you've got it above the water area because when you're humidifying the thing that you've got to do is make sure that you're not getting the paper wet if you want it humid you'd be able to get a container that's right size and do this and close it to cover it for it may take as little as half an hour, it may take an hour and see that it's gotten flexible and then you'd be able to take it out onto and have a big surface ready where you can roll it out on several people asked about the best practice for documenting people, dates and places in photographs can they write that information on the back there are I find I myself but of course some surfaces don't even take that there are pens that you can get that are stable archival ink pretty much this carbon black that you can use to write on the back and the picture that I showed in the first slide actually had Henry written down there and that's something I wrote when I was young at the ballpoint pen and I kind of regret doing that but at the same time it's identified him and if no one else would know it's identified so do look for for margins for places that do test sure that you're not using too much pressure because if you are using writing on something that's then it's going to be very easy to imprint on that we had another question about storing and preserving fragile glass negatives do you have advice for that for negatives there are a variety of different storage ways that you can handle it and if you do look online and there are quite a few archival suppliers these years just again you can be looking for things that are custom for negatives and of course there can be different sizes glass negatives are going to be the most difficult to work with and there are custom enclosures that you can get for those and there are definitely a variety of sizes for all the range of negatives that you can find available and that might be something that you would give a higher priority in storing because those are master copies and negatives can even have information that even if you've got the print it wasn't printed out at a high enough intensity to see but you've got it in the negative so that would be a good ideal thing for a high priority is to seek out those sleeves or enclosures that fit those sizes and then look from dealing with that how much you've got and what kind of box you need and you can use that with photographs and negatives there are going to be a whole lot of different options there may be portfolio style boxes as well one of our viewers has heard that storing silver items in a vacuum bag or container will keep it from tarnishing is that a good practice? that basically storing anything that protection is going to be a good practice as I've shown it's my own thing to work with possibly if you've got something that you don't know how it was made or where it came from and being a reliable vendor or manufacturer then do look for something different but as far as having there are some things as I mentioned with the books that you want so horizontally rather than vertically but for smaller selections as long as you're getting the support it's typically just a personal choice in how you want to store it so you can use the portfolio style or something that stores on them thanks we also have some questions about cleaning slides and photographs dusting them they've heard that they can use air puffs or microfiber cloths but what do you recommend I personally try and avoid cleaning unless there's actually something that's genuinely a problem in the first place to be honest photographs can be extremely difficult because of the whole variety of different development types that are out there and so if you really do want to to clean it then I would make sure that you're using something that comes from an archival supplier or if you're lucky to still have a bit cameras nearby they would also have those in spots that you can find some wipes that are there but if there's something that is especially bad with a photograph I really would recommend working with a conservator I know but you have such a potential to lose the image and importantly I think we have time for one more question what about laminating paper documents laminating is a big note that is using a piece of and a piece of things that find things together in the first place tends to be where the biggest problems come do not laminate things that you want to save as family or when you buy any means you can use it for temporary ID cards and such but you don't want to do it at all for your collection lamination has been the cause of a lot of big grant funded projects that have put survivors to work for years so don't laminate thank you so much Sarah we have a lot of questions and unfortunately we didn't have time to get to all of them so if Sarah did not get to your question please send an email to preservation at narra.gov videos and handouts will remain available after the event from this YouTube page and from the fairs web page we're now going to have a short intermission and we'll return on the hour this is session number three of the 2019 virtual genealogy fair the lecture is for the beginner and experienced skill levels it is entitled immigration records more than just ship passenger arrival lists by presenter Elizabeth Burns this presentation will discuss historic immigration laws and the resulting immigration records available online and through the National Archives Ms. Burns is an archivist at the National Archives at Kansas City and Narra's subject matter expert for immigration records and I am now turning over the broadcast to Elizabeth Burns today we're going to discuss how immigration laws have changed over time and the impact this had on the records that exist today look at the different types of records available through the National Archives and address how you can get started with the National Archives next slide slide number five the National Archives holds records created by the federal government in the course of its daily work so this presentation will focus on these federally created materials keep in mind there may be resources available through state archives local historical societies etc. that could prove useful to your searches especially if the events of interest occurred prior to the formation next slide slide number six now slide number seven our discussion of immigrant laws starts in the 1789 to 1819 time frame when documentation varied significantly because there was not a single entity creating and maintaining records of immigrants the customs bureau oversaw court starting in 1789 but with limited exception such as New Orleans and Philadelphia which consistently recorded arrivals for spans of multiple years it's difficult to find documentation of immigrants to the U.S. next slide slide number eight the steerage act of 1819 changes this until January 1820 the U.S. government did not require passenger lists but the new steerage act required the master of a ship to provide a manifest of passengers boarded at foreign ports and it required each vessel to carry a specific quantity of provisions for each passenger with an entitlement to compensation should supplies prove deficient next slide slide number nine the immigration act of 1891 introduced further documentation as it required that information be collected about immigrants entering the U.S. overland from Canada and Mexico it's interesting to note that approximately 40% of the foreign passengers arriving in Canada were actually bound for the U.S. so the creation of border crossing records began capturing a large pool of immigrants that likely would not have shown up on previous arrival documents the act also created a superintendent of immigration who oversaw immigrant inspectors at ports of entry and barred polygamous persons convicted of crimes of moral turpitude and those suffering from diseases creating a provision for medical examination next slide slide number ten the immigration act of 1921 in 1924 add another layer of documentation for individuals entering the U.S. as they imposed a national origins quota which limited the number of visas issued to individuals from different countries by the State Department each year only immigrants with valid visas were permitted entry next slide slide number eleven this graphic shows immigration trends to the U.S. 1821 to 1995 you can see how the immigration acts from the 1920s dramatically shaped the quantity and geographic origin of immigrants to the U.S. throughout the mid 1900s the laws I introduced are only a small handful of the multitude of immigration regulations and statues that have existed in the U.S. but you will see as we continue how even these few laws shaped the records available for genealogists today it's important to consider the laws that may have been in place at the time your immigrant ancestor entered and resided within the U.S. as there is often a direct correlation to what you may or may not find in your research next slide slide number twelve now slide number thirteen passenger arrival lists are a good place to start our conversation about immigrant records the forms have changed over time and these changes often mean that there may be unfamiliar notations on the records I always suggest that researchers should look for the instructions to the collector that are often found among the forms for a given arrival these can be a valuable tool for understanding notes that the collector may have added to entries researchers are lucky because many of the arrival records have been digitized and are available online through the National Archives Catalog www.narsimmigration.com or familysearch.org so digital searching and browsing functions are much more accessible you can visit NARA's immigration overview web page to learn more next slide slide number fourteen passenger lists can include a variety of information for the subjects recorded including name, physical description age, occupation place of birth name and address of closest living relative in the U.S. and so on next slide slide number fifteen as you search passenger records there are several tips to keep in mind if you're having trouble using name searching but you have a general idea of when and where someone may have entered the U.S. it can be worthwhile to browse the list when browsing it's often beneficial to read the list from back to front because they're normally ordered based on cabin class first, second, third unless you know that your ancestor had the means to pay for first class it's more common that individuals traveled third class meaning that their entries would be closer to the end of the passenger list keep in mind that port names are often misremembered as the name of the ship for example SS Bremen Hamburg or Rotterdam if the individual that you're researching could have entered under a different name be sure that you're checking the last residence in destination column in case the locations listed there resonate with your research I actually had a researcher who was able to track down his ancestors in the passenger list based on the small town in Iowa that was recorded in the destination field where he knew that the family had migrated to if an immigrant was rejected and returned from Ellis Island check to see if they arrived approximately two weeks later at Philadelphia Baltimore or via Canadian border crossing Ellis Island was known to be one of the most stringent of the ports and you can sometimes find immigrants who failed to pass through Ellis Island successfully entering at another location a couple weeks later keep in mind that a rejection at Ellis Island was not deportation as the individual never officially entered the country so they were readily allowed to attempt entry at another location next slide slide number 16 final tip to keep in mind is that name variations are common so you have to be open minded about interchanging letters or considering additional names an individual may have traveled under for example Scandinavians were known to travel under their fathers given or middle name or even under the name of the village where they were born next slide slide number 17 there are also a number of common misconceptions and research errors that you should work to avoid it is false that all passenger list records survive and are available for online research unfortunately for any number of reasons like water, fire, etc. not every record survives it is false that there is a list for every shift that arrived at a US port and that all passengers were listed in some cases you can see that only the first cabin passengers are listed or the list may even be very clearly incomplete because it only records a handful of names for a vessel that obviously carried hundreds of passengers it is false that passengers participated in the creation of the list and it is also false that the list were created at Ellis Island or the port of entry lists of individuals purchasing tickets were kept by the ticket brokers and these lists were submitted at the port of departure where the captain created the vessel's passenger list this also means that any change in name did not occur at Ellis Island but rather at the point of ticket purchase you need to be careful about any assumptions regarding ship report as recounting of arrival was often many years removed from the event and it was common to confuse ship name with port of arrival or departure you also need to be careful about blanket statements like this record is not my immigrant because the name, age, nationality destination, etc. is wrong just as with any genealogical research you have to come in with an open mind and look at all the clues and context before making an assumption that a record couldn't possibly match the person that you're seeking the link I provided on this slide is to an article that goes more in depth into some of the most common passenger manifest errors that researchers make the first part of the article is specific to certain nationalities but into the article is actually pertinent to any researcher so it's well worth time to read it next slide, slide number 18 if you have an inclination that your immigrant ancestor may have been a seaman vessel crew list may be a useful resource for your search the list exists because of an early 19th century law that required masters of American vessels leaving or arriving at U.S. ports to file crew list with the customs agent foreign vessels were initially exempt from the law but the immigration act of 1917 required specific documentation about all alien seaman on vessels entering the U.S. many of these lists have been digitized and are available in our online catalog and on ancestry.com or familysearch.org next slide slide number 19 vessel crew lists are similar to standard passenger arrival records but there are normally fewer pieces of biographical information recorded information listed could include name birth date and birth place last residence nationality and details about the vessel where they served next slide slide number 20 if you are able to locate an immigrant ancestor on an arrival list a good next step is to track down any existing ship photo the photo may not give you specific insight into the individuals that you're researching but what it does provide is a glimpse into what their travels into the U.S. were like many ship photos have been digitized and can be found on ancestry.com or through a Google search on the vessel name one of my colleagues was researching her great-great-grandmother Francesca Beck's entry to the U.S. Frances, as she was later known and is shown here with her husband Colstein-Shupbar after discovering that Frances entered the U.S. on October 7th 1891 in New York aboard the SS Friesland we were able to locate a number of photos on both ancestry.com and online through a site dedicated to the red star align that the ship was part of next slide slide number 21 some immigrants entered the U.S. through land-based ports of entry border crossing records from along the Mexican and Canadian borders can be a wonderful genealogical resource and many have been digitized through ancestry.com and familysearch.org seeing ship lines and rail companies agreed to treat all passengers destined to the U.S. port of entry and Immigration Act of 1891 required that information about immigrants entering the U.S. overland be recorded at land border ports inspectors prepared manifest lists take note that prior to October of 1906 this excluded native-born Canadians crossing the northern border also important to understand was that only those passengers declaring a U.S. destination donation will be listed on the records of arrivals next slide, slide number 22 here are two sample Mexico to U.S. border crossing records for artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera you can see these documents record many of the same details as the standard vessel passenger arrival records we discussed earlier but the information was recorded on individual cards rather than a manifest listing NARA's website provides some great information about utilizing Mexican border crossing records if you visit the link I provided on this session's handout next slide, slide number 23 Canada to U.S. border crossing records can seem confusing at first glance the records are often found in a record set titled manifest of passengers arriving at St. Albin's Vermont District through Canadian Pacific and Atlantic ports 1895 to 1954 often called the St. Albin's list these records actually reflect a variety of ports in Idaho, Maine, Minnesota Montana, New York North Dakota, Vermont and Washington I worked with a researcher who located a record for an ancestor who entered at Buffalo, New York Buffalo, New York and St. Albin's Vermont are 700 miles apart but you can't discount these records just because someone may not have entered at Buffalo's Vermont if you have not had luck locating your ancestor in a vessel passenger manifest it doesn't hurt to check the St. Albin's list next slide, slide number 24 passport applications are a record set that may not cross your mind when researching immigrant ancestors but they can be a great source of biographical data such as birth date and birth place information about spouse and or father, date and birth time early passports were generally valid for two years or less so you have to keep in mind that it's worth checking throughout an individual's entire lifetime because the same person may have had multiple passport applications next slide, slide number 25 there are some specific rules to keep in mind as you begin a search for passport records first until 1941 US citizens were not required to travel abroad two exceptions to this rule were brief periods of time during the Civil War and World War I second the US government only issued passports to US citizens two exceptions to this rule were years between 1863 to 1866 and 1907 to 1920 when aliens who had declared their intent to become naturalized US citizens could obtain a passport under congressional tax next slide, slide number 26 passport applications from 1795 to 1925 are maintained in their original paper format at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland with digital copies available online through ancestry.com and fold3.com of note fold3 only has through 1905 posted online if you're looking for a passport issued April 25th, April 1925 through the present your request will go through the US State Department next slide, slide number 27 set for a brief period of time during the Civil War before World War I, alien visitors were not required to have visas in order to enter the US the practice of requiring all aliens to obtain visas from US officials abroad before departure to the US began in 1917 as a war measure during World War I and has continued since then NARA maintains visa applications created and maintained by the US State Department for the years 1914 to 1940 but it's important to note that with the exception of precedent cases and files that contain policy material individual case files for 1914 to 1932 were destroyed by the Department of State NARA has a site specific to genealogical research including state department records that I've provided a link to in the session handout if visa records are of interest to your research work especially for immigrants entering the US from 1924 to 1944 timeframe I would suggest looking at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services genealogy program which I'll address further later in the session next slide slide number 28 naturalization is another big area of interest for researchers for immigrant ancestors September 27th 1906 is an important date to keep in mind if you're diving into naturalization records prior to that date any court of record county, state, criminal federal and so on could complete naturalization proceeding after that date the responsibility for naturalization procedures was given to federal courts with uniform rules and standardized forms following although it took time for the lower courts to let go of the practice we've actually seen courts in more remote parts of the country continuing the work up into the 1970s and 80s you can generally use 1906 as a date to shape where you start and focus your naturalization search be sure to visit the federal court site I've listed to determine what national archives office maintains the records for the federal courts covering the state where your ancestor resided although some of these records have been digitized and made available online there are many records that are only available in paper format at NARA locations next slide, slide number 29 our discussion of naturalization records is best shaped by looking at the kinds of records created during the process and where those records exist the declaration of intention also called first papers declared an individual's intention to file a formal petition to become a citizen in 1906 act, aliens had to receive a certificate of arrival that verified legal immigration to the US and you will often see the certificate of arrival with the declaration of intention in our holding early declarations are very limited in the details recorded it could literally just be the individual's name country of origin and the dates that they appeared in court later documents like the one for Chin-Wing Soo that's on the slide right now include details about family entry to the US and even have a photo attached it is worthwhile to note that starting in the mid-1950s declarations were no longer required so you begin to see only the petition for naturalization available next slide slide number 30 the petition for naturalization also called final papers or second papers is the final step toward becoming a citizen file the minimum of two years after the declaration immigrants petitioned before the judge and were either granted or denied citizenship the petition did not need to be completed at the same court as the declaration and in many cases if the petition was filed at a federal court the declaration was consolidated with the petition when the actions took place at different locations as with declarations early records tend to record very little detail about the subject of the record unlike declarations where graphical information is recorded on later forms you will not find photos attached to these documents next slide slide number 31 once citizenship was granted an individual was issued a certificate as proof of citizenship if the individual petitioned and received citizenship through the court a certificate of naturalization was issued if the individual derived citizenship through another individual such as a parent or spouse a certificate of citizenship was issued two copies of certificates were created one was given to the individual the other was kept by the court and transferred to the immigration and naturalization service INS normally certificates are not available through NARA though especially within our federal court holding but there are occasions where certificates issued April 1956 and after can appear within an INS file which is a set of records we will touch on soon next slide slide number 32 pre-September 1906 you may need to contact county or state courts or even reach out through archives or county historical societies to track down the declaration of petition of course there are also handfuls of exceptions where the National Archives receive naturalization records from county courts but you can't count on that just as September 1906 as an important date for determining what court created an early naturalization record October 1991 is another important date because responsibility for naturalization proceedings again shifted hands moving from the courts to the immigration and naturalization service for naturalization records created after October 1991 you have to place a request through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service U.S. CIS for any naturalization after September 1906 it is helpful to note that U.S. CIS should have records of the actions taken so if you've hit dead end trying to determine the correct court it may be worthwhile to submit a request through their agency and see what you're able to find U.S. CIS has exclusive authority over any matters concerning citizenship after 1906 we are the ultimate resource to confirm whether an immigrant received citizenship in the 1906 to present time frame regardless of time frame when you're looking for naturalization records it's helpful if you can provide the individual's name including any variance and their country of origin an approximate date range of when the naturalization could have occurred and where the individual would have been living at the time that could include city, county, state next slide number 33 final set of records I'd like to address are alien files more commonly called A files the 1940 alien registration act required all immigrants residing in the U.S. to visit their local post office and register their alien status with the federal government as part of this process the immigration and naturalization service began issuing each alien an alien registration number and on April 1st, 1944 began using this number to create individual case files A files were originally created to house all records of an alien not yet naturalized as they passed through the immigration and inspection process next slide, slide number 34 ultimately though the files can potentially reflect information dating from the birth of the subject through their entry to the U.S. and subsequent interactions with the federal government during their time in the U.S. leading up to any final action like death, naturalization permanent resident status or deportation documents on the files vary drastically from subject to subject as they were dependent on an individual's interactions with the federal government but they can include applications affidavits, correspondence, photographs and more beginning in April of 1956 the immigration and naturalization service streamlined their filing systems and the A file became the single point application for immigrants starting at this point the files can even include documentation of the naturalization process including preparatory applications copies of the declaration and petition and the final certificate next slide slide number 35 all A files currently maintained by the National Archives are indexed in our online catalog and as new files are added to our holdings each year the catalog will be updated using first name and or surname and will be looking for results with the title alien case file for persons name or A file for persons name with one exception the A files for the entire country including U.S. territories are being consolidated at the National Archives at Kansas City it's important to note that some of the A files from INS district offices in San Francisco, Honolulu Reno and Guam are maintained by the National Archives at San Francisco be sure to take note of the location of record listed for each result in the catalog to confirm that you are submitting your request to the correct NARA office A files are eligible for transfer to NARA for permanent retention when 100 years has passed since the subject's year of birth currently we maintain A files for individuals born 1918 and prior remind that NARA does not yet have all of the A files for individuals born in that time frame any A files that have not yet transferred to NARA can be requested through the U.S. citizenship and immigration service next slide slide number 36 now slide number 37 jumping off points for your immigrant ancestor research can show up in lots of places from federal records like census naturalization and military service to family records like naturalization certificates bibles and church records newspapers, obituaries and grave sites and even vital records you really have to take time to consider what you can do with the information you find because even small details can set you on a path next slide slide number 38 the citizenship column on U.S. Census forms can provide clues to an individual's immigration date and citizenship status that first appeared on the 1900 U.S. Census although you always need to take the information with a grain of salt the details recorded can start to give you a clear idea of time frames when actions may have occurred and the kinds of records that you'll want to look for for example if you see 1903 as a year of immigration and AL recorded on the 1910 census you would assume that you should potentially be able to locate a 1903 passenger arrival record but you won't be looking for naturalization paperwork because the individual was still maintaining alien status in the U.S. at that time if for that same person there is a PA recorded on the 1920 census you can assume that they had started but not completed the naturalization process meaning that they had filed their first papers between 1910 and 1920 and finally if that same person has NA noted on the 1930 census you can assume that between 1920 and 1930 the individual completed the naturalization process and obtained citizenship so there should be naturalization records available through the NARA office maintaining federal court records for the state or your ancestor resided next slide slide number 39 in the same way that the census provides clues to citizenship the draft cards are another NARA record that can help you determine your immigrant ancestor status at a specific juncture in time the cards have been digitized and are available online through the National Archives catalog ancestry.com and familysearch.org next slide slide number 40 NARA's digitization partners have made a number of microphone publications and original records available through their websites through the National Archives online catalog but have not found digital images for the records you are seeking it can be helpful to review the listing of records and microfilm to see if the relevant records may have been captured by a partner organization you can click control F on your keyboard to bring up a search box for keyword searching on the page and each title includes a link out to the digital content on the partner web pages that site is actually regularly updated as new materials are scanned so you can fairly consistently trust that what you are seeing there is up to date in terms of what is available online next slide slide number 41 it is also important to keep in mind that NARA does not maintain all of the federally created records relevant to immigrant research the U.S. citizenship and immigration service U.S. DIS maintains a variety of immigration and naturalization related file types that have not yet transferred to the National Archives for permanent retention including A files and alien registration forms called AR2 forms certificate files also called C files visa files registry files etc. if you are not familiar with their agency it will be worthwhile to review their genealogy program website what they hold and how to search and request copies next slide slide number 42 thank you for joining me today for this presentation and I hope I have given you ideas for diving into research on your immigrant ancestry as a quick heads up over the next year I will be working to update all of the immigrant record related web pages throughout NARA's archives.gov site so be sure to check out the www.archives.gov slash research slash immigration web page so you can stay up to date on what NARA has available on site and online related to immigrant ancestry. Are there questions I can answer at this time? Okay Elizabeth thank you very much for a very informative presentation. Yes we received a number of questions during the course of your presentation and we are going to do the best we can to address as many of them as we can if we don't get to every question we apologize in advance but we'll see how much how many of them we can touch on here. The first set of questions we'll start with pertaining primarily to Ellis Island one question is a grandfather came and went back to Italy several times I can only find one are all records recorded and will I be able to find them all pertaining to Ellis Island? I'm not sure about gaps in Ellis Island records I believe there probably are some the other thing to keep in mind is that Ellis Island was not the only port that individuals could enter through so there is potential that you should open up your search beyond just looking at New York. Okay and another question are there reports for those who arrived in 1720? 1720 is prior to the establishment of the United States as a country so there's not going to be federal records what you're going to be looking for are something that may have been more locally created let's say that maybe a local newspaper was recording people who may have entered in through the country or other kinds of local correspondence things like that especially at that time you're going to be looking more to your state archives, your local historical societies things like that. Okay and what about immigration before Ellis Island opened? Any clues as to places to look for information on immigration that people who you would think would come to Ellis Island but it wasn't open yet it didn't exist? Yeah you know a lot of people assume that Ellis Island was where everybody came through but there are a lot of ports of entry all along the coastline so it's important to keep in mind that you should just be kind of broadly checking all the different ports that are available. There are some great resources online that give you ideas of when different ports were open so if you have an idea of time frame when somebody may have come into the country you can kind of start narrowing down what ports may have been open or not at the given time frame and that might help you narrow your search a little bit but the big thing to keep in mind when you're looking for immigrants is never to assume that somebody came in through New York Yes we got several questions along these lines. What are other ports than Ellis Island where immigrants would come into the United States could you just kind of list off a number of examples because people are asking for like are there ones for New Orleans and so forth Yeah New Orleans is a port really anywhere along the eastern and western seaboard if there was somewhere that a ship could come in you could have immigrants entering there. There are probably hundreds of ports all along the eastern and western coast. Okay yeah so there's a potential for records there possibly. Are there any ship passenger lists for immigration to Virginia and Maryland in the 1600s? Again you're getting really early and you're outside the scope of federal records so what you'd be looking for wouldn't necessarily be a passenger manifest but perhaps something else that would have documented people making the move whether it's correspondence whether it's newspaper clippings and in that case I would also suggest checking to see what might be available at the port of departure was there any documentation occurring on the other end of their trip that might be of assistance. Okay and I have a specific question about Baltimore when did immigration records start for Baltimore would you know that? I do not know that offhand but it's information that we could readily track down so it's worth going ahead and submitting that request in through inquire at narra.gov and we can track that info down for you. Yes just to repeat what Elizabeth said if there's a question we can't answer or we don't get to your question you can email us at inquire at narra.gov that's the email address for receiving reference requests and we can if you note Elizabeth Burns presentation we can get it forward to her accordingly where are the original records abstracted online for castle gardens I can get a summary for my ancestor but would like to view an original if possible I'm not familiar with castle gardens I don't know if you are just a but that was a question so I'm familiar with castle gardens but I can't I will be honest I don't know where the original records are for that where the actual paper records are that would be another one if you send it into inquire I can definitely do some looking and help you but I will say because a lot of those records have been digitized and they are old and fragile it is very rare that people access those original passenger manifests in person normally we have researchers utilize the digital copies Okay here's an interesting one getting into early World War I era and pre-World War I a way to find a passenger manifest for a ship that never arrived from Italy it was torpedoed and sunk near Italy in 1915 in that case I would actually suggest looking more on the Italian end of things I am not as familiar with what Italy was creating in terms of departure lists or things like that but I would think that maybe checking with the Italian National Archives and seeing what kinds of records they would maintain would be a good place to start unfortunately because it never entered the US you are not going to have those traditional immigrant manifests that you would have so you would be looking for something that would have indicated their departure out of Italy Okay so we have questions coming from many different areas and topics and so forth so pardon Elizabeth we are trying to address them in an organized fashion if we can but sometimes we can come in a very wildly from one to another so this question is in a different vein where would I find records for Slovakian aliens working in Pennsylvania coal mines looking roughly 1890 to 1907 I guess I would be curious what kind of records you were hoping to track down there is definitely potential for trying to look to see if any of the coal mining companies happen to have any records of individuals who worked at their locations at that point I would say you are going to be trying to look for other kinds of records do you have any indication that they might have naturalized have you looked through the court records in that area to see if anything happens to show up about them have you been able to track them down in the federal census records and what does that indicate about them things like that would be my suggestion Okay another my grandparents family first appear in the 1930 census I cannot find when they came to the United States or where they came to the US from in Europe nothing in Ellis Island or on Ancestry do you have any suggestions on other places to try or to start 1930 census have you checked in the citizenship column and what do they indicate there about immigration and citizenship status you found them in the census that at least means that you have an idea of where they resided in the US so I would certainly reach out the National Archives office covering that geographic area and see if they can be of assistance in helping guide you know are there naturalization records are there other things that you might consider but I feel like you would definitely have some avenues for continuing a search it just may be good to talk to a staff person so they can give you a more specific guidance okay and then we have a few questions that kind of cluster around the same topic and that's pre-revolutionary war and revolutionary war era do records exist for immigrants from other countries do records exist coming from other countries during those time frames and do you have what are suggestions that you may have especially when you're talking pre-war and then revolutionary war and shortly thereafter very early in the Republic yeah I mean you really have to keep in mind if you are pre-revolutionary war the United States doesn't exist at that point so you aren't going to have any federally created records because you don't have a unified organization that would be creating anything and even during the early time of the beginning of the United States up until 1819 you're really inconsistent it's just kind of port by port if they happen to be recording things at any given time like I mentioned there's only two ports that kind of consistently kept records but you know it's really hit or miss because you didn't have any single unit that was keeping record of things and at that point the whole premise of immigration wasn't necessarily something that was registering as something that they needed to be tracking really what you're going to be looking for in that early time frame are like I mentioned anything from the end of departure so the originating country did they create anything about ship leaving and then on the US then you're really going to be looking more for those local records you know are there local diaries where there's newspapers where they were recording names of people coming through you know at that time newspapers especially were much more you know here's every detail about all of the people in this area right now so you can often find names of all the people who are entering on a given vessel but you're really not going to be looking at the National Archives we are not going to be a good resource for those early time frame okay and then you noted that around 1819 records federal records do start to become a little bit more consistent can you say a little bit more about that yeah so that 1819 act is when everything got put into place that passenger lists were required so that's when you start to see beginning in January of 1820 is when you really start to see more consistency in the creation and existence of passenger lists on the US port okay we have a few naturalization related questions one is so would naturalization process paperwork be in a state archives prior to 1906 for instance like the mid 1850s in Maryland okay so it really depends I will say it's a fairly safe bet that it probably didn't occur at a federal court you really have to think when you're early especially I would say early mid 1800s you've got to think about how people would have been traveling in between locations to achieve naturalization they're not going to travel way out of their way to go to a federal court if there's a local court near them that would also complete the process for them so if you know where somebody was residing you really need to consider what would have been the closest court geographically to that person and in a lot of cases that's going to be your county, your state your criminal court that's in that local area some people did complete them at the federal court we do have federal records that are early but pre 1906 because it wasn't standardized they could go anywhere they really do see that show up now when it comes to where those records are located that varies state to state county to county in some cases you'll see copies of the records of the state archives some of them are still with those courts some of them are at local historical societies in handfuls of cases there are times where those county court records have ended up at the National Archives so you really have to be open minded about where you're looking for the records and that's kind of the unfortunate thing about the pre 1906 is that you just have to go into it knowing that you're probably going to have to reach out through multiple sources in order to find the document okay very good another question my grandmother born in the united states lost her citizenship status upon marriage to my alien grandfather in 1913 according to the 1920 census records would she have had to reapp to apply for naturalization so she actually would have had a couple options I guess just to bring everybody up to speed on this there was a law in place until 1922 that a woman's citizenship was tied to either her father or her spouse so if you were a US born woman and you married a German man in the eyes of the federal government you became a German citizen now Germany wouldn't have really seen it that way necessarily but that was how it was viewed from a US perspective in 1922 the law changed women obtained their own rights to citizenship but you had a couple options you could apply and obtain citizenship through the naturalization process but there was actually a law put into place that allowed for repatriation at a later point so in some cases you'll see naturalization paperwork at some times you'll see repatriation records and sometimes they didn't know that they had lost their citizenship and so you don't actually see any documentation of it but there's a couple different possibilities both the repatriation records and the naturalization records will show up within the federal court records that the national are okay this one's about a person's grandfather who was naturalized as a result of his World War One service the person says they can't find World War One files they were destroyed in a fire and they haven't checked the local court files but might NARA or the State Department have records yeah there's definitely potential and we do have military petitions show up in our court records so even though his military personnel file may not exist anymore that doesn't mean that there's not documentation of his citizenship I would definitely reach out through the National Archives office that covers the geographic area where he was living okay I'm just looking through remaining questions that we have here that have come in is it possible to locate special investigation records for Ellis Island so what this person is referencing are special inquiries that were held when people were detained at Ellis Island there are not records for every single person that was detained but there are cases where you can find those records the files are part of the subject and policy records that exist at the National Archives in Washington DC sometimes they're called the 56,000 files there are actually a few different ways that you can track down files within that set one is a set of microfilm the T-458 that has been digitized and is available on Ancestry.com you can try name searching but sometimes you actually just have to go through it not arranged by individual's name it's actually more of a topical subject based index but it can help you narrow in on where your immigrant board of special inquiry records may exist there are some wonderful resources about tracking down those board of special inquiry records on the USCIS website so I would actually suggest shooting off an email to inquireatnara.gov and I can provide you with that direct link to give you a better idea of how to start that research okay another question my grandfather came to the United States from Trinidad in 1905 his final destination was Nebraska any idea what port he might have come through I think the person is looking for ideas of where to start to look for potential ports of entry um yeah I mean coming from in the southern part I would suggest looking at Miami, New Orleans some of the ports in that part of the country because it's very unlikely that he would have come in you know through New York or any of the kind of northeastern ports so I would focus your effort south if you know that he entered in 1905 there's a pretty good chance that you should be able to find some documentation of him if you have any idea that he might have naturalized that might be a good way to come at it if you have found him in the Federal Census that might also give you some clues there's a few different ways to approach it but I would say your kind of southeastern ports are going to be your target there okay and we have one final question for you and that is how about departure records did the United States maintain outbound manifests especially for the interwar periods I don't know for the interwar periods but there are certain windows of time and certain sets of records that do exist regarding departures out of the US that's something I would have to do some more looking into if you had a specific scenario it would be easier to look at that way okay thank you very much Elizabeth for your presentation to the audience if the presenter did not get to your question please send an email to inquire at narra.gov videos and handouts they will remain available after the event from this YouTube page and from the fair's web page we will now have a short intermission and begin on the next hour welcome back this is session number four of the 2019 virtual genealogy fair it's for all skill levels and entitled using National Archives records to research World War I naval and marine corps records for genealogical research our speaker is Nathaniel Patch during his session Mr. Patch provides you with a guide to discovering the story of your World War I sailor and marine using the records of the National Archives Nathaniel Patch is an archivist with the US National Archives at College Park and subject matter expert for US Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard records I'm turning the stage over to Nathaniel Patch thank you and good afternoon my name is Nathaniel Patch I'm the Navy reference archivist at the National Archives in College Park and we will be discussing today how to use US Navy and Marine Corps records to describe the life and times of your sailor or marine that served during the first World War but to begin I just want to go over the lecture I'm going to start with a brief history of the first World War and how the Navy and the Marine Corps participated to give you all context on what your sailor or marine was doing in Europe at the time of the war then we'll go into the four main steps to documenting your sailor or marine first the his official service record and then we'll then concentrate on how to research your sailor and then we'll go into part three which is to research your marine and then I want to take a moment and see about using other records that may add more context to the war at large so at first the how the United States enters into World War I is as a result of Germany's expansion of the unrestricted submarine warfare this infringed upon our ideas of the freedom of the sea and also the Germany's attempts to elicit help from Mexico as described in the Superman telegram should the United States enter the war Germany would have liked Mexico to come on their side and keep the United States occupied but on so but when the war did finally start for the United States in April 1917 the United States Navy sent a squadron of destroyers to Queenstown, Ireland and by the end of the war as shown on the map here there were naval bases pockmarked all across Europe including the Azores and the Mediterranean and even as far flung as Archangel and Vladivostok Russia so the Navy first when the war was started the Navy was relatively a small force it had approximately 5,000 officers and about 70,000 enlisted and through the use of the or the expansion of the Navy through the Naval Reserve Act of 1916 it expanded to much larger to about 33,000 officers and about 500,000 enlisted and this included female reservists for the first time so women were not prohibited from joining the Naval Reserve as a result of the act and several hundred joined the Navy and the Marine Corps in the proper sense they were not just volunteers they were legitimately part of the military so and the major tasks of the United States Navy during the First World War included transportation and convoying which means that we not only provided ships to transport cargo supplies troops, material but we also organized them into large groups called convoys and we began to use destroyers and sub-chasers to escort them from the United States to England and back this was to deter the German U-boats from attacking and it was relatively successful and as from the first example a lot of our tasks was centered around anti-submarine operations and this included not only sub-chasers and destroyers but also the use of the aircraft for the first time in this way so naval aviation and Marine Corps aviation expanded during this period and then one of the other major tasks was to lay minefields and the largest being what was called the Northern Barrage which extended from Scotland to Norway to deter German U-boats from using that passage to get out to the open Atlantic and then the last major use was the naval railguns, this was used at the end of the war the Germans had devised a similar weapon system that was bombarding Paris and so we decided to answer in kind and the most the largest guns available were those of the Navy and so they packed them onto rail cars and made the railway batteries and there were five in total for the Marine Corps mobilization began as the war began and the was a relatively small force although they were scattered worldwide they had approximately 700 officers and about 17,000 enlisted but they were not in large forces and like with the Navy the Naval Reserve Act expanded the Marine Corps and they eventually had a total of about 3,000 officers and about 75,000 enlisted by war's end and this included 277 female Marine reservists as part of the expansion the Marine Corps opened up the Quantico Marine Corps base as a training facility which then became an officer training place and then like with the Navy Marine Corps aviation expanded into two major squadrons the first aviation squadron and the first Marine aeronautical company and then this is more explanation of the expansion but of the 30,000 Marines that were sent to Europe with the American expeditionary forces approximately 1600 served in an additional 1600 served in Naval bases all across Europe of the 30,000 11,000 were taken as casualties with 25 POWs and about 2,500 killed in action and by comparison to other jobs that the Navy provided during the war were coastal defense the Navy was also involved in building more ships, aircraft ordnance production also expanded counterintelligence and cryptography so with the Navy arriving in Ireland in May the Marines were the first authorized military force to Europe from the United States the fifth Marines mobilized in June and arrived in Europe in July and thusly they earned the moniker first to fight at first the fifth Marines were kind of disembodied but by September 1917 the fourth brigade of the second division was formed and the fourth brigade was strictly the Marines that served there which included the fifth and sixth Marine regiments and the sixth machine gun battalion and as I mentioned before the Marine aviation also expanded which included the first aeronautic company this force worked primarily with the Navy aviation units in anti-submarine warfare but the first Marine aviation squadron which started out as a squadron side later developed into a force which consisted of four squadrons and these squadrons fought inland with the Marines of the second division and this is where the Marines began to develop their close in air support which has made them famous throughout the subsequent wars so to begin the first thing that I would suggest to anybody who's going to take on this type of research to research a sailor or a Marine in World War I is to request the service record in this slide there's an excerpt of the standard form 180 which is the form that you should use to request their service record the importance of the service record is that most of the records that I'm going to talk about are not going to be arranged by a person's name and they're also very difficult to you to search a particular individual's name so we need to have information about where your sailor was assigned to or what unit your Marine was assigned to doing this this way we can start to unlock the records but the service record can also provide you information not only about assignments but also kinship were there any judiciary things done to your sailor was he wounded was he taken a prisoner so these things can start to set up your research and the items that you would need to look at again stressing the point as you read through your service record please be aware of things like duty stations, ship assignments travel assignments and dates of when all these things occurred ranks and rating and service numbers because if a sailor or a marine that has a common name you may see it appear in different places and without ranks and service numbers you may not be sure who you're looking at so those are all the things to keep in mind so as you start to flush out your as you read through this service record and you begin to line up all these duty stations and assignments and things like that you can start getting ready so part two now we're going to talk about how to research a sailor primarily the records that you're going to be using are going to be at the National Archives Building in Washington DC as part of the old military and civilian reference branch and if you have further questions based on this discussion please email archives1reference at narra.gov or inquire at narra.gov but to begin with we're going to start with the easy fruit the low hanging fruit if you will they are primarily in record groups 24 and 45 and I've divided this slide up between ship and non-ship related records in record group 24 which is the records of the Bureau of Navigation this is where the deck logs and the must rolls are kept deck logs are the record of the officer of the watch so the day is broken up into 6-4 hour watches and what goes on during that watch is recorded now not everything gets in there so this is not an accurate record of what your sailor did from morning to night this is where the ship is location weather if there was an accident, if there was an engagement things like that must rolls are the record of who is assigned to a particular vessel so this is an accounting document so this reflects what sailors are permanently assigned to that vessel although passenger lists can appear in must rolls that's not what they're really for and so in the must rolls you can see when people are promoted, demoted if they're killed the Navy tends to just not include you anymore so if the name drops that means that something happened there are reports of changes that indicate and they're included with the must roll and they will show these promotions to motions and changes to the permanent crew as in folks that are being transferred to the ships and those that are being shipped off getting a different duty station and this would also be true for the non ship records as well but the must rolls are more prevalent because stations don't generally keep station logs although there are some for the World War I period they're framed in the same way as the deck logs then in RG45 which is the records of the naval records and library there are war diaries and these are like the World War II war diaries these are reports to the chief of naval operations dealing with the activity of that command be it a ship be it a shore station and these are some examples on the on my left is the log book and this is the what a cover of a deck log looks like and on my right is the must rolls cover and then these are examples of the war diary and on my left is the cover of the war diary for the USS Flesher and on the right is a excerpt from that diary also in RG45 are several series that relate to prisoners of war lost ships so in entries 257 and 261 are lists of lost ships either sunk they disappeared or they they sunk by other means other than combat they are arranged by the name of the ship and they provide information about how the ship was lost by and by what means on the other side in entry 266 and 271 there are there is information about list of officers and enlisted that were lost either killed in action missing otherwise no longer in service and they are the indexes to those series are arranged alphabetically by surname and in entry 271 are lists of prisoners of war which are also arranged alphabetically by surname and they both series provide details as to how the sailor came to that particular situation so in part three we are now going to talk about how to research your marine now this is where things get a little complicated because there are records located in both buildings so in record group 127 which is the records of the U.S. Marine Corps those records are located at the National Archives building in Washington DC and because the fourth marine brigade was part of the American expeditionary forces there are records contained in record group 120 the records of the American expeditionary forces which are located at college park technically the record group 120 is considered an army record and not a navy record and that's why they exist out at archives too instead of National Archives and College Park and not in Washington DC so again starting off with the low hanging fruit what's easily available in record group 127 there are unit records and they are arranged by unit and there's not too many units for the Marine Corps as I've mentioned there's the fourth marine brigade which consists of the fifth and sixth regiments and the sixth machine gun battalion there are other marine units that are available within the series and we'll talk about that in a little bit and then there's an entry that is arranged by the combat division number so in this particular case you would look under the second division and then under the second division records there are breakdowns of the subordinate commands like the navy the marine corps maintain muster roles and the muster roles are monthly which are quarterly and sorry for not mentioning that and for the under each monthly muster role they are the corps is arranged by their command so you would look for the fifth and sixth marine regiments and then find your marines for each month between July of 1917 through November 1918 for the marine corps muster roles they have been digitized and they are available on Ancestry.com they are not yet available on our catalog as yet so for the records that are in Washington DC as I mentioned that there are unit records and they are part of entry 240 and so they include the fourth brigade which includes the fifth and sixth marine regiments but they also include the fifth brigade which was formed and it made it over to Europe right at the very end of the war in November of 1918 and they consisted of the 11th and 13th regiments these records also include records about the aviation units and as additional records that might be of interest there is the commandant's correspondence so he is the highest ranking marine within the marine corps and he would have had information about the units that were being sent to Europe what was going on in Europe and there may be additional reporting given whatever circumstances your marine may have been and if you are interested in the kind of equipment and supplies that your marine may have had during the time you can also check out the quarter master's general correspondence which is also part of R2127 for on the army side which is at the records out in college park there is the records of the combat divisions and as I previously mentioned the second division is your primary target under the division there is a section for divisional records which are arranged by the war decimal classification system so there may be intermediate or intermediary records in that section but then after the divisional records there is a section for the brigades and there is a section for the fourth brigade then after that will be a section for the fifth regiment and the sixth regiment and the sixth machine gun battalion also at college park since you are going to be up there for the 120 material there is a few little odds and ends there is in wrecker group 407 which is the records of the agenda in general under the central files section there are files for the marine corps and then there is a section on the decorations for the second division also in wrecker group 117 which is the records of the American battle monuments commission there are there is a correspondence with officers from the second division which includes marine officers as well now part 4 is basically taking all this information that you are getting from the low hanging fruit and if you want to go beyond just naming a ship and finding where the ship is gone and what it is doing if you want to put that ship or that marine unit into a larger context of the war was it part of a squadron was it doing anti submarine operations what were they doing then the next part of this talk will then go into what kinds of information that you need to collect to go this way and then what series may be able to help you get a little further so this is going a little bit beyond genealogy or the basic but you might find it interesting all the same so as you go through like a ship records on the deck logs they will list not only the ship's name but also give you a list of the command structure and there may be records for each portion of the command structure for the aviation units you have the squadron and then you also have the air base so there may be records about the air base as well and part of the way that you can also track information particular to your relative is if you go through the muster rolls and he is transferring from station to station ship to ship you can then follow his career that way as well in addition to information that you find within the service record so once you have gathered all that information the next few slides are just going to touch on different war one era records that are available I am not going to go into the same sort of details I did with the low hanging fruit so one record group of use would be RG-38 which has a number of correspondence publication files relating to World War I and in particular to the commander of naval forces in European waters in RG-72 which is the records of the Bureau of Aeronautics because the Bureau of Aeronautics did not exist during World War I it was established later and so as you can see from the listing of series a lot of these records were maintained by the chief naval operations and so when the Bureau was established in the 20s those records were transferred from the CNO to the Bureau of Aeronautics but if you were interested in how aviation was being applied to anti-submarine operations how they were thinking what they were developing would probably be discussed here as well and then this is one of my all-time favorite record groups this is record group 313 which is the records of naval operating forces the reason why this record group is so interesting to me is that it's a complement to RG-38 and also RG-45 which are generally records that are sent from the field to Washington so in 38 and 45 are the records sent to the chief of naval operations whereas the 313 material are the administrative and correspondence files of the field commanders so if you wanted to know how a particular battle was going to go or if they were planning on doing something but they didn't you can look into these records and there are 32 entries in total I only listed here just the highlights the ones that I think would probably interest people including the submarine force and cruiser and transportation forces since convoying was a huge importance during World War I but also the submarine was also very important as well but we know more about the U-boat than we do our own submarines during the war so there's that as well now the Marine Corps and be careful when you tell a marine this the marines were a part of the Department of the Navy and so as a result of that you might be able to find some Marine Corps related records and so here again I've listed a number of series that may have Marine Corps related materials in a Navy record group in particular with Marine aviation if you are if you have a relative or you're interested in that the Bureau of Aeronautics would have overseen both the Navy and the Marine Corps aviation aspects so the development of aircraft, the training of personnel and overall application of aircraft during that period also in 313 are the records of naval operations in European waters which again these are the London office so these are the records of Admiral Sims who is the commander and what he was being told by the British and how the British and the United States were coordinating to conduct the naval war here's some additional Marine Corps records that may be of interest for researching a marine these are down in the Washington DC office there's a number of registers including registers of deserters, discharges non-commissioned officers an alphabetical list of Marines listed Marines covering the early period of the Marine Corps there's also a large number of records relating to casualties and there are a list of death records death registers of enlisted and in particular a register of deaths during the First World War out in St. Louis which is the national military personnel record in addition to having the service records for the Navy and the Marine Corps during this period they also hold the burial case files and this is although it's in RG92 which is the records of the U.S. Army Master General they include all services so these are the records of where American personnel Army, Navy, Marine Corps were buried and so this too would have information relating to kinship where the person died where they lived before they joined the service and you can request for these records as you request their service record with the SF-180 and then lastly we have special media so there are any number of records in the cartographic section which includes graphics like maps, posters ship plans and and then on the other side we have still photographs which includes pictures of places, people ships and things of that nature so with that let the adventure begin and if there are any questions thank you so much for your presentation Nathaniel a lot of really great information on there we do have a couple questions from our online audience can the service record form be used from someone who served in World War II or Vietnam sure I meant you can request a service record I think is late in 1992 but the service records for the sailors and marines in World War I are part of the National Military Personnel Archives which means that those records have been accessioned to the National Archives and are now part of the public record whereas for the Vietnam War since they were separated after 1962 they're still part of the National Military Personnel Records Center which is makes it a Department of Defense record and so you have to adhere to certain kinships to request the records thank you for clarifying that why would they consider American expeditionary force marines to be among Army records can you explain that a little bit more I'm not entirely sure how well it in terms of the records themselves it's the records that were generated so the American expeditionary force was under the command of a U.S. Army General General Pershing and so he was basically in charge of that whole force it happens to be that the U.S. Marine Corps got for lack of a better term invited to the expedition so they were essentially under the operational control of a U.S. Army command so the in World War I they hadn't made the delineation between U.S. infantry divisions versus U.S. Marine Corps divisions which is what you have during the Second World War so I hope that answers the question one of our viewers says my grandfather joined the Navy during World War I too late they discovered he was only 15 years old and sent him home several years ago I requested his service record and was told nothing existed probably because he was sent home and so therefore he never fully enlisted and so that's why there's not a record okay another personal question I've heard a story about my great grandfather serving on a Navy ship during World War I that came under attack I don't know what ship he served on could you briefly explain how I might get started to find out more about his experience first thing I would do is request his service record and that should tell you what ships he was serving on then you would have to kind of unfortunately at this point would be the methodical method is just to investigate each ship that he was assigned to during his service and then you can use either or use both the deck log and the war diaries deck logs being in RG 24 and the war diaries in RG 45 and then just try to account for each attack that that ship that those ships came under and that should answer your question what is an example of special operations that a Marine might have been discharged to participate in during World War I well I don't rightly know they didn't the Marines at that time weren't really doing special operations not in the way that the Marines today do so they were basically an auxiliary infantry unit if you will and that's why they were joining up with a army unit now of special operations the first Marine squadron was asked to do those jobs because they were asked to bombard German U-boat pens and apparently the Army Air Corps and the Royal Air Force were not very keen on doing those jobs because they are heavily defended so they got the Marines to do it but for being discharged well you can be discharged for any number of reasons you can be discharged for medical psychological issues shell shock was just becoming a thing and affecting the troops well that were along the front we have a couple of viewers who have family members who were part of the Marine Corps and Army bands during World War I are there records of those bands of the bands itself that I don't know I would look towards is the combatant's correspondence and look depending on how they are arranged they are maybe a filing designation for bands and you can find out how the bands were deployed at that time that's basically where I would start but again too I would look to see from the service record if there were delineations between different bands like if there was a regimental band well they didn't have divisional bands if there was a special organization band and then that might help you to look in different places now if the bands were sent overseas again combatant's correspondence files for the commander naval forces in European waters because obviously the band was playing for somebody and they might have been playing for him if a pilot was shot down and buried in Europe would those burial records still be in St. Louis? yes okay and related to that is there a list somewhere that shows what type of military records are kept at which archival center? well there's the catalogue that would help and hopefully this presentation will help delineate that as well so essentially the main division is that for World War I era records that are generated by the US Navy and the US Marine Corps are going to be in the Washington DC area at the National Archives building while US Army records from the same period are going to be at the college park place archives but in terms of personnel records individual personnel records are going to be in St. Louis and anything that are personnel related like the burial case files are going to be also located at St. Louis alright our final question is a little bit more light hearted how do you keep track of all of these abbreviations and letters? practice alright thank you so much Nathaniel for our viewers if the presenter did not get to your question please send an email to inquire at narra.gov videos and handouts will remain available after the event from this YouTube page and from the fairs web page we will now have a short intermission and our next presentation will begin at 2pm eastern welcome back to the virtual genealogy fair if you are following along from home this is session number five the lecture is for the experienced skill level and entitled discovering and researching bureau in affairs school records and our speaker is Cody White during this session he will describe boarding and day school related records both for individual students and schools in general that are found in record group 75 records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Mr. White is an archivist with the National Archives at Denver and subject matter expert for Native American related records and now turning the broadcast over to Cody White thank you and well hello there to everyone listening and watching live I would also like to welcome those in the future as we are recording this for posterity's sake we are now live it's high noon the mile high city and I want to thank everyone for tuning in and listening to me talk a bit today on BIA records next slide please slide number two let's go over a bit of what my plan is for today I'd like to start with a brief history of the Bureau of Indian Affairs what we'll call BIA for short and its education efforts over the years we'll look at the types of schools American Indian children attended the types of records generated restrictions on certain records and those files that no longer exist then we'll look at what's in student case files throughout the years we'll examine what can be found in administrative records and then we'll wrap it all up with a research example before finishing with how to start your own research and what resources are available online next slide please slide number three so what is the BIA well with predecessor agencies dating back to nearly the start of the US the Bureau of Indian Affairs was formally created in 1824 by the Department of War to handle relations with native populations entry pressed westward a few decades later the Bureau had evolved into its own agency under the purview of the newly created Department of Interior where it remains today the structure of the agency has varied over the years with superintendencies covering entire territories giving way to individual agencies sub agencies substations all created to administer to a particular tribal nation or multiple nations on one reservation I'll mention agencies a lot today and that's what we're talking about a local office that works directly with one or many tribal nations for example the red lake agency in Minnesota administers the red lake reservation home of the red lake Chippewa so later the superintendencies were brought back in a fashion as area offices to manage the various agencies under their geographic locations as one can imagine relations between the agency and the tribal nations they administer have ebbed and flowed more often ebbed as we will see today next slide please slide number four so as a primary connection between the government and the various tribal nations the BIA features a pretty tortured history and it is from one such dark chapter that of the drive for assimilation that BIA schools emerged from but let's go back even further for a minute to show how the idea of education had been floating around awhile excuse me missionaries were embarking on education efforts even before our country was founded William and Mary in the early 1700s had one such program and in 1819 the federal government first made funds available to support missionary schools aimed at the native population five years later there were 32 missionary schools educating nearly 1000 native children in the east the BIA though at this time having moved on largely from the trading focus with the factories were now engrossed with the removal in the east and yet to deeply push into the west nor really fully concern itself with education efforts next slide please slide number five that brings us to the mid 1800s the treaty era where the federal government signed 377 treaties with various tribes these including the one seen here on this slide are in our holdings and were recently the focus of a preservation and digitization program thanks to an anonymous donor and are all available online via our online catalog which we'll touch on more in a bit but I digress it was from in many of these treaties where the BIA run schools were established as the texts would clearly call out the creation of schools or education programs so within the spate of treaties in the 1850s came the first on reservation boarding school at Fort Simcoe on the Yakima reservation which opened in 1860 and was in operation until 1922 next slide please slide number six to the assimilation era so by the late 1870s this policy that had been kicked around for decades had taken firm roots in the BIA and dramatically altered the lives of American Indians and what was left of their lands so with tribes already forced on the reservations through the treaties the new movement pushed further contending that if American Indians adapted European style clothing the English language, institutional education and the concept of land ownership and farming they could better assimilate into the population at large in conjunction it was at this point we see the first non-1979 to 1918 the BIA was ruthless in stalking these schools with students so much so that in 1885 Congress had to pass a law forbidding the taking of kids without parental permission and then later specifically the tactics of withholding rashes to force parents to give up children so even seeming progressives like Estelle Rio from up in Wyoming an early champion for women's rights as superintendent of Indian schools from 1898 to 1910 espoused the common views that Indian were racially inferior so in these two school images from schools thousands of miles apart we see prime examples of the assimilation movement notice the uniforms, the Eurocentric art they're creating there are many great books, memoirs essays out there that well document this era and they're worth checking out next slide please slide number 7 the off-reservation schools began faltering by 1920 though with attacks from both sides one side argued that they weren't assimilating the children well enough and as the other side simply pointed out they were cruel the few that remained were able to be pickier about students, students had to apply and the school shifted from the militaristic sort of industrial education to more liberal arts so vocations were still taught and encouraged the 1928 Mariam report which deeply, deeply criticized the BIA's education efforts and helped usher in the Indian New Deal in the 1930s further forced schools to change numerous schools closed in the 1930s while others most notably the Santa Fe Indian School embraced or started to embrace native culture and fostering native art so here on this slide we see a 1935 photo from the steward Indian school grounds right outside Carson City, Nevada and the uniforms they're long gone jumping ahead 40 years the Cherokee Central Elementary School classroom looks no different from a regular public school now a side note this school today is in fact tribally run in 1962 the BIA shuttered all the day schools in the quality boundary the land that the eastern Cherokee bought in the early 1800s and opened the central elementary school and in 1990 it was turned over to the tribal council to run speaking of elementary schools the public ones another education trend in the 20th century was the increase of children attending public schools which saved the agency money and saved it from criticism yet were no less assimilated this is documented in the blisterings 1969 Senate report on American Indian education which as a time frame is about where this presentation will end as our BIA collection here at the National Archives starts to taper off at that point with more recent records still with the agency next slide please slide number 8 let's dive into the type of schools and start with the most well known the non-reservation boarding schools these were built apart from reservations often at former RV Fort sites and operated independently of BIA agencies reporting directly to the BIA commissioner and at times as seen in both Michigan and New Mexico superintendent of these schools would also be put in charge of nearby BIA agencies for these reasons these schools alone will often have dedicated record series in our collection and so are the most researched and referenced the student body was also often diverse with students from a variety of tribal nations please slide number 9 the reservation boarding schools were those built on the reservation now these were the earliest of the boarding schools and it was actually from them the idea that educators needed to remove the students even further from their people to fully assimilate them the non-reservation boarding schools were mixed in with general records as we will see in this slide we see a student body photograph from the Cherokee boarding school an operation from 1890 to 1954 next slide please slide number 10 schools were by far the most numerous and least controversial given they were based on the traditional concept of a student going during the day and returning home at night as BIA education efforts were standardized day schools became the sort of equivalent to elementary schools feeding students into either boarding schools or local high schools and you could have dozens and dozens on one reservation split up per reservation district for example in this slide we see a shot of students down into Mexico along there with an inquisitive deer off to the left important to note records for individuals attending these schools often move with the students along to their next school student case files are rare to find as with the reservation boarding schools records of these schools are usually mixed in with general agency records and we'll see that later in the presentation today next slide please slide number 11 schools as mentioned earlier were not run by the BIA but are often erroneously thought not to be documented in our collection so many early on were boarding schools but they dropped that aspect the costs were high and they couldn't retain students so they quickly switched to the day school model and while there is not the level of detail we have for other schools mission schools were required to submit monthly reports to the respective agency of which students were there attendance, dates and the like so depending on the agency these were sometimes saved many of these schools as with the accompanying churches are located deep in tribal lands part of the allotment process during the assimilation era granted allotments to schools and churches one such example is a student's Indian school in North Dakota seen in this image from our holdings yeah still educates Turtle Mountain Chippewa children today and is still open next slide please slide number 12 individually or researching doesn't show up in any BIA school records there is a strong chance they simply attended a public school which shouldn't be looked as being superior to BIA schools the assimilation aspect was just as acute given the curriculums and prejudices the number of students attending public schools really took off around 1920 here ten years later on this slide we can see a snapshot from just one reservation of how many students were attending each type of school and over half were at a public school again as with mission schools the local BIA agency required reports from public schools so if these were saved one can find proof of attendance and some limited information you see public school records come up a lot in financial files and reservations are exempt from property taxes some school districts require the BIA to pay for each student setting off a complicated formula for that exact cause this image here from the Library of Congress it's simply the best image I could find for an early 20th century rural school native children probably didn't attend this one in here on it's a few hours from both the flathead reservation to the east and the cordillane reservation to the southwest next slide please slide number 13 so for a visualization of school locations and how they changed I want to show you a couple maps next slide please slide number 14 there are the schools in 1899 both types of boarding schools are marked and the day schools are simply numbered so indulge me for a second and take a look at Colorado you see two non-reservation boarding schools noted Grand Junction and Fort Lewis now with that let's jump ahead 20 years next slide please slide number 15 to 1919 now look at Colorado again those two schools are long gone and now there is only a new reservation boarding school on the southern youths land as mentioned earlier this was emblematic nationwide the closure of schools throughout the years and it leads us to a records problem that I like to call next slide please slide number 16 law schools or at least that's what I call them as I mentioned before non-reservation schools were sort of their own little island reporting directly to DC the rule of thumb I seem to find that if they closed before World War II the records of the school were often not saved what remains is a spattering in various general BIA files some agencies at different time periods like the Navajo agency and the Wind River agency compile student case files from all types of schools across the country of all reservation children and so case files from law schools can show up that way agency reports on who they send agency student censuses or annual and statistical reports into DC are all additional sources about the activities of the law schools in this slide we see some records from one such law school the Genoa boarding school that was in Nebraska before this graduation commencement program can be found in New Mexico's Charles Burke school records and this list of students found in Montana flathead agency records often in these cases too local institutions and colleges will work to assemble what little documentary record is left on the school as well as collect oral histories and what not so these sort of create more of a localized history for them next slide please slide number 17 let me further into our talk today into student case files let's detour quickly to restriction general school and agency records typically have few privacy restrictions given their age but that is not the case with student case files privacy laws are in place to protect the individual there can be information that isn't the most flattering or what not in these files so even with those that are old enough to be open bear that in mind when researching but really they were kids often in horrible places horrible situations I mean I myself got into trouble in that sense great convicted of obstruction of justice ended up on probation so such troubles or disciplinary records are hardly indicative of the individual generally speaking a student case file is closed to the public for 75 years after record creation as long as a student is alive only they or someone with the power of attorney can access it if a student dies that restriction ends is approved with a death certificate or given that later records have social security numbers the social security number death index but it is on the researcher to prove it many student case file series are mixed with dates so the entire series is closed to blanket reference until all the files are older than the 75 year restriction the case files used in the rest of this presentation today are all open either because they're old enough or unfortunately are from students passed away next slide please slide number 18 and one more stop before we dive in the student case file I want to talk a little about names in the early years a big part of the assimilation process was the assigning of English names and dissertations have been written on this very topic so I won't dwell but to say that school records can be a useful tool in reflecting this where one can see what was changed and better help connect other genealogically useful records but here we see an excerpt from a list of students showing the assigned English names later in history names also present a roll block of sorts for research especially in tribes not used to the idea of surnames so generic ones meaning son of or grandson of were created and then as unfortunately given the high mortality rate even into the 20th century cost children shifting around and thus acquiring new surnames then lastly you have the possibility of incorrect different spellings by official so the shifting of family and misspellings are both seen here on this slide all four of these records are for the same Betty all these issues can add wrinkles in researching and with that caveat let's now look at some actual student case files what one can find in the boarding and high school case files up through the 1970s next slide please slide number 19 so the earliest student case files they are really even hardly that when you can find them for some schools like the Albuquerque Indian School opened in 1881 fires during the history destroyed early records so here's one for Francis King who came from the Oklahoma Territory to Carlisle and this is it there's scant biographical info how long she was there and then a follow-up form of what she did after school throughout the history of BIA schools they were really big on learning what a student did after the school which can be useful in learning who they married where they moved and such next slide please slide number 20 so now at the turn of the century you start to see more records saved medical records applications for the non-reservation schools outing forms where the students went and how they were correspondence detailed grades promotion records financial records start to appear usually in regards to travel to and from the school and that's the topic of the handwritten note down at the bottom of this slide where Ramona was given permission in 1918 to go home for Christmas elsewhere in her file with a letter from 1917 where the school superintendent forbid her from going home that Christmas her Pueblo only roughly 35 miles due west of Santa Fe he wrote that no students should go home for Christmas a real peach but sadly that was the norm in the era next slide please slide number 21 between the world wars we start to see more standardized forms across schools which dive deeper into family info asking about siblings and what schools they attended parents jobs and we see the first official student photograph we also start to see more student counselor type records behavior ratings as well as standardized testing results it never fails I see some of these and I have flashbacks those Iowa basic tests that we had to take in elementary school also present starting around now will be earlier school records from day schools and other boarding schools starting to give one a more complete glimpse of the entire academic career next slide please slide number 22 as we saw to a limited extent in France as early file from Carlisle we now start to see extensive documentation of post school life actual questionnaires that are mailed to students after graduation to inquire as to what they've done so with John's case it was most likely due to its closeness to the principal as evidence in the personal postcards he sent here as he trained to become a marine code talker side note where it did go on to serve with distinction in the Pacific earning the bronze star and purple heart in his three battles we also start to see records that are more personal writings or artwork from the students themselves as well as more detailed transcripts counseling records, health records standardized testing results, travel records however mundane do lead to large files at times students and work programs will have forms detailing that work and location where at and in the eval for the work and then harkening back to the early years of BIA schools vocational training was again emphasized for some students there was a special six year program for older students 16 to 20 years old with little or no education they had received the basics and then some sort of vocational training and leave with the certificate next slide please slide number 23 and this is similar to our last slide with some extra here at the inner mountain school we see annual student photographs yet more detailed academic records and often sound scriber discs as a student's diction exercises the poor material and recording system means the quality varies and cannot handle many playbacks are our motion picture branch does have the capability of attempting to capture the audio so our field units have nothing locally to do so in this era you also may see university transcripts again BIA was very interested in the poor school life and so would collect such records slide please slide number 24 so for mentions and records of individual students we talked about the case files but now let's talk about where you can find additional files about students tools the type of records and how to locate them and in some cases it's easy there are dedicated series from a school whether it's a tenant ledger or an administrative file series from a certain school however in other cases you have to dig into the general BIA agency files to glean out the school related records BIA agencies used a host of filing codes varying by agency for many years until standard decimal code system was put in place in 1926 with those codes one can narrow their hunt within hundreds of boxes to zero in school records that might be abused it is important to note the records saved do vary greatly by agency so what you might find say in the Fort Bidwell agency records out in California won't be the same or as detailed as what you might find in the Shawnee Indian agency records down in Oklahoma now some agencies will lump all their administrative files together in a massive series and others would split them out into education, construction, financial, again it varies greatly by agency next slide please slide number 25 dive into what's out there I've mentioned reports before so we'll start there the government, the government loves reports and here are two examples detailing mission and public school attendance found in the Fort Bell map agency files under the 800 file code of education so in the earlier years the agencies would compile these descriptive list of pupils this one here from 1887 for kids sent to each particular school now these reports evolved but the information stayed largely the same in this 1936 students overall and the schools they attended then there were the annual semiannual quarterly monthly I'm not joking here reports that were generated for the headquarters in DC that were both statistical and narrative discussing the operations and accomplishments of the schools now remember back when I said non-reservation schools reported directly to DC it's in these four more reports largely reproduced on microfilms series M1011 that are one of the best sources to find out more about those law schools we talked about but back to this slide this report on attendance of students at public schools are a boon to find because if you're researching someone who didn't go to a BIA school you might still find where they attended via such reports as long as you know the tribe again though it can be a crap shoot if they were saved now alright we've talked enough about reports moving on moving on next slide please slide number 26 let me just get a drink of water quick so individual health records they can be found in the student case files but general health records can also be found and while they may not be perhaps the greatest use to individual researchers to aggregate information found in them can be a gold mine for academic researchers studying health issues schools struggle with illnesses outbreaks of smallpox measles, tuberculosis, trachoma were constant issues here we see a form for documenting students' weights we see a monthly report from the Charles Burke school down in New Mexico, sorry again for bringing up reports and then unfortunately a plat of the cemetery at the Santa Fe school BIA records especially early on show how cold the agency could be in these regards sending six students home seemingly before they passed or demanding parents pay to get the body's home of deceased students or else not get the body's back again this academic topic is better explained and addressed elsewhere but here is where the records are found next slide please slide number 27 pertaining to individuals but I found that researchers often enjoy the records of the school buildings in ancestor attendance where they were and how they were laid out these can be found in several filing codes within general file education matters building and construction this 1861 classroom diagram comes from our cartographic branch in College Park, Maryland and the school land plot showing for instance where the well water was good and bad comes from a lodge pole school up in Montana next slide please slide number 28 as we all probably remember school newspapers and newsletters from our own education BIA schools were no different these are very sporadic technically speaking they probably should have been considered temporary records but were saved anyways and are now found in our collections some schools were good about saving them and others not so much our online catalog which we'll talk about later is a good place to start to see what might be easily discoverable for the Chilaco school in Oklahoma our Fort Worth branch has digitized many of the Indian school journal magazines from there and placed them online through our catalog these seen here were saved by the novel agency for whatever purpose next slide please slide number 29 sports sports were a big part of the BIA school experience and this is really seen in the general admin files with rosters, photographs, letters detailing equipment acquisition here we see the dominating 1933 season of the Albuquerque Indian School football team as well as the women's basketball team from the Rapid City Indian School early on women's basketball pretty big the girls team from Fort Shaw in 1904 after going undefeated across Montana beat an all-star team in St. Louis Missouri twice to be crowned the world champions at the World's Fair that year next slide please slide number 30 schedules are another of those items along with menus too that one can find an agency record that further flesh out a student's tenure what exactly they didn't win here we see one such daily schedule from the Sherman Institute out in Riverside California next slide please slide number 31 then there are the generic photographs capturing student life here we have a classroom shot from a glass plate negative of the Chilaco school along with a 1971 shot one of my favorites of a student band up in Oregon at the Chimoa school slide please slide number 32 and then lastly student art found either in case files or in dedicated folders or scrapbooks here are a couple pieces from students here in the southwest slide please slide number 33 alright let's tie it all up in a research example Gretchen O'Larking was born on the Fort Belknap Reservation back in 1922 here we see her at age three captured in the photograph that accompanying her family's industrial survey entry taken in 1925 slide please slide number 34 you go the easy route first you run her name through our online catalog of collections, folders and items and you get a student case file hit next slide please slide number 35 after clicking on and reading you see the file is located here in Denver at the National Organic Branch so you reach out slide please slide number 36 and we get her student case file the file is thin but given us from tuition boarding school it is somewhat rare and gives us some good info again note we have a misspelled name Old King that was corrected to O'Larking had that not been caught our research would have been derailed a bit this is also why when we get a student file request we then come up empty we often think outside the box and for different iterations in case the name was spilled misspelled in like this regards next slide please slide number 37 and we also get a copy of an application to the half skill school now this is the best source of seeing exactly what other school she attended note how she first attended a boarding school then a day school before heading to a non-reservation boarding school now these applications are filled with genealogical information on the family as well as personal info on the student such as hobbies and books they enjoyed next slide please slide number 38 and other school names we then dig into the Fort Belknap agency records regarding schools and we find some rosters from her time at the day school and the boarding school note the one week gap in attendance of everyone at the big warm school there on the left elsewhere in the folder it was noted that the school was shut down due to a measles outbreak next slide please slide number 39 we also get a schedule of what her day was like at the boarding school now I know there's lots to read in these two images so I'll take a break here to note at this point that all these slides are available for download and reviewing on the National Archives virtual genealogy page slide number 40 please so researching further since she applied to the Haskell Institute she might have went there so we go back to our online catalog and look up records from that school and we see they're at our Kansas City facility next slide please slide number 41 and it turns out she did the Bismarck Indian School she was attending closed another of our law schools so she transferred we now have an updated photograph and again a misspelled name Gretcham, Gretcham I don't even know why you would think it was spelled that way next slide please slide number 42 but as is sometimes the case the previous school records are carried over so we still get an academic snapshot of her time at Bismarck seen here on the left in addition to Haskell seen here on the right slide please slide number 43 and we also get the original version of her application as I mentioned before the standard four page applications have a great deal of information Gretcham enjoyed volleyball for instance and reading Call of the Wild Tale of Two Cities Indians at Work Magazine which was actually published by the BIA CCID activities the Smithsonian is a complete run of these online ours are a little more scattered but getting a little bit off topic next slide please slide number 44 entire Haskell student case followed by 132 pages largely because of material like this memos evaluations schedules next slide please slide number 45 and lastly Gretcham actually doesn't have much for health records typically you'd find physical immunization records but not here this is about it it's a doctor's note regarding a swallowed pin in her sewing class slide please slide number 46 so how does one do their own research our online catalog is useful as we have seen throughout this talk for learning what record series are out there which schools have their own collection or where agency records are at and it can be searched by keyword creating agency date record group NARA facility feel free to play around catalog.archive.gov in some cases student case files can be inquired into via phone or email and copies made out to send but as many of the research avenues mentioned today one will need to visit in person at a national archive location and really dig into the records as very little is digitized and available online and the work needed to go through the folders is beyond what our staff can do for the public. VI records are located coast to coast from our grand facility on Pennsylvania Avenue to the national archives of San Francisco with a host of additional locations within that 2,817 miles span. Next slide please slide number 47 our American Indian records webpage where you can learn more about starting genealogy research explains the type of records provides information on which tribes are covered by which agencies or where those records are at there is a page here that lists agencies and tribes by state as well as a page for BIA schools that have dedicated record collections arranged by state we have some big improvements coming to this site in the next year so please please check back next slide please slide number 48 so before I open the floor to questions I wanted to pause a moment to tell a story of a former student at the Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City, Utah Tony Dadman of the Navajo Nation graduated in 1964 with vocational training to be a welder and was widely praised by a school advisor one year later however he found himself arriving in South Vietnam and 10 months after that he was killed in action in an ambush on a no-name hill along with 11 of his airborne comrades so I'd like to dedicate I'd like to dedicate this talk today to Tony to all the other BIA school alumni the warriors who gave their lives in defense of a country that often looked upon and treated them as second-class citizens if as citizens at all thank you your talk that was of slide please slide number 49 alright so we have any questions queued up any questions live yes thank you Cody very much for your excellent presentation you've already have a number of compliments and you might be having invitations coming in for some other conferences I'm battling a cold too and I appreciate that you're welcome on behalf of our online audience so far I have about looks like six questions we'll start with a very hopefully easy one are there any records of teachers at these schools yes yes they're actually often that's another common research topic well people coming in who have St. Louis facility it's not part of the record group 75 but the employee files for people that work for the BIA are kept with the civilian records in St. Louis their facility there so if you have an ancestor you believe work for the BIA you should reach out to them see if you can get the employee case file from that you can then see what agencies and then reach out to the different units to see if you can find more records on what your ancestor did or that person did that's great news to hear thank you so much we're going to start on one side of the coast of the US and go to the other with our next set of questions so your next question is my great-grandmother is 100% Native American and believed to have been raised by a white family are there any other records for children in New England about 1842 specifically New Hampshire the earlier records especially for that area get a little difficult because at the time they weren't really concerned with I don't want to say cataloging but listing at the time it was the removal area and what not especially in the east and the BIA hadn't really did the widespread censuses that they would do later on generally speaking it's a lot easier to pin down relatives starting around 1880 when the BIA required censuses from all the different agencies in the 1840s there were only some limited ones going on with the tribes that they were unfortunately trying to push out so with that said it might not have a lot of luck within our federal records but again sometimes local institutions might have stuff the earlier back you go the better luck you'll have with local historical societies and what not as the government just didn't keep that detail record okay thank you for that answer our next question is about tree days the question is and then I'll give you some more detail about what they're looking for the question is is there a link that can be provided to the new online images of the treaties I'm specifically looking for the treaties made in California 1850s that were not ratified alright well let's break that into two I'm drawing a blank the treaties are kept in a different record group not record group 15 that's BIA I can't remember the record group number but they all are in the catalog under a particular series in that record group and then you can kind of browse them now as for non ratified treaties last I heard they actually are still working on digitizing that collection they had some extra funds left over from doing the ratified ones and they found that the non ratified ones needed some conservation and work and what not so those are in progress I don't have any kind of idea on the time frame of when they would come out but rest assured they are being worked on as far as digitization goes okay that's great news we have a glimmer of hope there so the next two questions are about specific schools the first question is I did not see anything about the Shawnee mission school in Kansas was that because it was not associated with the federal government yeah and usually if I said mission school it was run by some religious institution the Catholics ran most of them but there were other denominations that had schools as well again like I said if you know the tribe that your ancestor or the person you're researching was from you can go to that agency and see if you can find any mentions of them being sent there but as far as school administrative records from those mission schools they just weren't collected by the federal government in the case of Catholic mission schools they did have a Bureau of Education in the Catholic bureaucracy and those records are at Marquette University again I'm not too familiar with what they have though well it's great that you did have an answer about Marquette that's wonderful thank you going back to the National Archives Holdings are there certain BIA schools that are particularly well documented compared to other schools yes by far Carlisle is and I think that's for two reasons one is the first so it was kind of the bellwether for what was to come so it's used as a symbol in that regard and also that those records are found in DC which have always been a little more described and better accessed I would maybe I'm a little biased because I'm in the West but there's quite a few other non-reservation boarding schools out here that have pretty extensive collections that we're really starting to describe and get better into so I think there's still a wealth of information that can be found out here okay wonderful thank you at this time I have one more question but we might have a few more but for now our last question looks to be about this general research question and it is how do you get pictures of the documents when making a personal visit to the National Archives well you know even in the short time I've been here it's really shifted you can bring in your own scanner at least out here in the field you can bring in your own laptop and scanner but most people now are simply taking them with cell phones as long as there's no flash there's really no problem a lot of the older stuff is a little more fragile so that's actually a better way of capturing the image than say using a photocopier or a flatbed scanner but you have to feel free to drop in to any of our regional facilities find what you like and make copies or pictures let's give the audience a moment to see if there's any more questions you were very thorough apparently again you had a lot of really nice compliments that came in it's a lot of info again if anybody has questions later on down the line feel free to shoot them to inquire and we'll get you set up wonderful thank you so as Cody said if you have questions that we did not get to or you think of them later please send them to inquire at narra.gov and please reference Mr. White's session so we know that the question is for him videos and handouts will remain available after the event from this YouTube page and from the fares webpage our last session begins on the hour welcome back to the 2019 virtual genealogy fair if you are following along from home this is session number 6 our final presentation for this year's fair the lecture is accessible for all skill levels and entitled the homestead act the land of your records sorry land records of your ancestors inner speaker is James Moon during this session he explains the basic provisions of the homestead act and demonstrates how to research and interpret homestead documents found in record group 49 records of the Bureau of Land Management BLM and therefore family history research Mr. Moon is a researcher, writer and lecturer on federal land policy and now turning the broadcast over to James Moon well first let me thank the National Archives for inviting me to give this presentation so starting on slide 4 for most people the homestead act is the law by which the American frontier was settled not enacted until 1862 it was but one of many authorities by which the public lands of the United States were disposed of it was however one of the most important since under its provisions it stimulated the settlement and development of the Great Plains, the Far West and Alaska leave those who slide 5 homestead entries could only be made on public lands as a result no entries could be made in the original 13 states Maine, Kentucky Tennessee, Texas or Hawaii exclusive of Alaska 1.5 billion acres of public lands were acquired it is on these lands that homesteads could be made next slide number 6 as noted the homestead act was but one of a dozen laws providing for the disposal and management of public lands when passed in 1862 there were already many laws enacted by Congress please go to slide number 7 early land policies sought to generate revenue, reward military service and promote settlement and development lands were sold at auction military bounties were given to soldiers who had served in wars like the revolution the war of 1812 and the Mexican war lands were granted to states private land grants were recognized that had been given by previous sovereigns road, canal and railroad grants were issued and then there were donation and preemption laws that allowed individual settlers to take up lands please go to slide number 8 after passage of the homestead act in 1862 many of the previous land laws continued to operate Congress also enacted additional disposal laws the consequence was all law of skates has called it an incongruous land system with policies often in conflict with each other for some of the later laws after the homestead act we had laws disposing of gold silver, coal as well as oil and gas there was the timber culture act which gave 160 acres for people who planted a certain amount of trees the desert land act gave lands to people who irrigated them the timber and stone act disposed of those lands that were chiefly valuable for those resources and then there were conservation policies that later came in like the national forest which took lands out of the settlement policies please go to slide number 9 administering the homestead act and the other land laws was the responsibility of the land department as it was referred to as in the late 1800s the land department consisted of the department of interior created by congress in 1849 and the general land office the general land office handled the day to day businesses disposing of and otherwise managing the public domain under it were district land offices with registers and receivers whose duties included taking applications and reviewing land entries surveyors general directed the survey of public lands and special agents investigated suspected fraud cases please go to slide number 10 of the many public land dispose of laws the homestead act and its amendments are considered by many the most important of the more than 1.1 billion acres of public lands disposed of over 285 million were patented as homestead or 25% of the total more important about 1.3 million individuals successfully completed homestead please go to slide number 11 the original homestead law of May 20th 1862 provided that a settler could enter up to 160 acres it specified the character of the lands that could be entered dated who could make entry and the requirements to be fulfilled to obtain titles please go to slide number 12 after passage of the homestead act in 1862 congress did many amendments to the law here are a few of them for example in 1872 union veterans could apply up to four years of service towards their five years of proving up on their homestead in 1875 and before Native Americans were allowed to make homesteads in 1898 the homestead law was extended to Alaska please go to slide number 13 in the early 1900s there were a number of new homestead acts in 1906 the forest homestead act allowed for entries within national forests in 1909 the enlarged homestead act gave up to 320 acres to a settler in 1912 the three year homestead act reduced the five year period of time to prove up on a homestead to three years in 1916 the stock raising homestead act gave 640 acres or a full section of land to a settler in 1976 the federal land policy and management act repealed the homestead law please go to slide number 14 so what were the motivations for homesteading well perhaps most important was for people was getting a farm of their own they saw this as a better economic opportunity they also saw it as a means of economic security some took out homesteads to help a family children would take out entries so that their father could add it to his original homestead there were people who speculated who took out a homestead in the hope that they could sell it for more money after they got patent there were people who did it for fraudulent reasons they wanted to help ranchers coal mining companies or timber companies get lands that otherwise they would not be able to obtain and then for many adventure was an important factor please go to slide number 15 interpreting the homestead act there were two basic concepts that the land department used when interpreting the homestead act one was the liberal spirit concept the homestead act had a generous and benevolent intent in offering 160 acres to settlers therefore the land department took the position that the law was entitled to a liberal construction in aid of the ends to be attained at the same time however the land department had a legal obligation to assure the law's proper construction so as to bestow the public lands for homesteads according to the law and not according to individual or corporate desires the other concept was good faith for the land department good faith on the part of a homesteader was the essential element upon which it determined their compliance with the law as secretary of the interior Henry Teller remarked in 1884 the homestead law is a practical law and it is so devised that it may have practical enforcement the law itself provides its own evidence of good faith in improvement, cultivation and residence if these exist as facts the law is satisfied therefore the land department measured the good faith of settlers by determining what facts and intentions showed that they intended to make their homestead entries actual homes to the exclusion of others elsewhere please go to slide number 16 like any good bureaucracy the land department had a flow that people had to follow homesteaders first dealt with the register and receiver in the district land offices most people only had to deal with these individuals here entries were made final proofs were made and accepted these individuals passed on a homestead it went to the general land office where it was again reviewed and in most cases simply went to patent if a case was contested for either fraud for one reason or another it could then be appealed up to the secretary of the interior who would make a decision on whether the homestead should go to patent or not and in very very few cases the entry might go to the federal courts please go to slide number 17 to make a homestead entry lands had to be surveyed this was by done by surveying the land into townships and subdivided into sections so the land could be identified by legal land description in doing this the first thing somebody needs to know when looking for a legal land description is the principle meridian as the color map shows there are numerous principle meridians lands were then surveyed into townships a township was identified by township north or south and then range which was on an east west axis therefore if somebody says to you my ancestor was in township one north one west so as mentioned the basis of legal land description is the township for the rectangular survey system a survey township plat shows what the surveyor found when running his lines within a township at the time of survey not the date the plat is approved in this example the plat shows a lake streams, roads, houses fenced lands and other features accompanying a survey plant are field notes giving surveying details and at the end a general description that describes the character of the land and oftentimes the settlement activity in the township if your settler settled on public lands prior to survey they should show up on the plat however since survey lines are a mile apart from each other and if somebody is in a ravine they might be missing please go to slide number 19 in addition to township surveys there were surveys made under the force homestead act of 1906 that law allowed people to make homestead entries on lands chiefly valuable for agricultural purposes within national forests the available areas were usually located in unsurveyed mountainous regions and the agricultural tracks of irregular shape so the law provided for the survey of entries by meats and bounds description known as a homestead entry survey or HES each survey received a specific number for the state or territory located the HES plat will show physical features like slope and natural water courses and will show the location of improvements like houses, barns and irrigation ditches the accompanying field nodes provide more information about improvements the quality of soil and the agricultural activity on the entry please go to slide number 20 the process complying with the homestead act and the regulations for it was at times a harder endeavor than on the land in cultivating it please go to slide number 21 the homestead act as with all public land policies is complex congress was constantly modifying the provisions of the homestead act for a variety of reasons at times the new law sought to liberalize a provision in other instances congress sought to close a loophole to prevent frauds from subverting the homestead act intent land department administration of the law was also constantly evolving its efforts to interpret the law in a liberal spirit but not in a manner that permitted the fraudulent acquisition of land resulted in it having to continually change the rules and regulations used to determine the good faith of settlers in complying with the provisions of the law what was policy in 1868 might not be policy in 1869 furthermore when the land department had a general administrative rule to govern compliance with the homestead act it at times allowed exceptions to such a rule when it was apparent a settler showed good faith in complying with the law please go to slide number 22 in making an entry the first thing an individual had to do was make application in it an entryman swore he or she was eligible to make entry and that the lands being entered were of the character contemplated by law please go to slide number 23 so who could make entry well first you had to be a citizen or have declared your intent to become one ex confederates were initially denied but later allowed married men of any age could make entry single men had to be over 21 years of age women in certain cases could make entry usually they had to be single and over 21 years of age African Americans were allowed as were Hispanics certain Native Americans were permitted to make homestead foreign born Asians however were excluded because they could never become citizens of the United States slide number 24 making an entry what lands could be settled well you were allowed up to 160 acres of public land you didn't have to take 160 acres you could take as little as 40 unappropriated, unoccupied and unreserved lands were open to homesteading they had to be non-mineral in character they had to be agricultural or suitable for grazing please go to slide number 25 what lands weren't available well those reserved for government purposes such as military posts often Native American lands were not available for homesteading particularly those within Indian reservations those had to be opened by Congress after treaty or agreement with tribes state and territorial lands granted by the United States were not subject to entry rural lands weren't allowed lands chiefly valuable for their timber could not be entered as homesteads lands covered by private land grants were excluded and lands granted to railroads also could not be entered as homesteads in complying with the homestead law oh please slide number 27 complying with the homestead law two essential requirements of the law there were two essential requirements by law required to fulfill the homestead act and obtain patent the first was residents the homestead law contemplated continuous maintenance by a homesteader and his family of an actual home on the land to the exclusion of a home elsewhere except as required by law the general land office did not stipulate any specific improvements other than the need of a habitable dwelling but the improvements had to demonstrate a homesteaders good faith to make his or her entry their exclusive home there was never a regulation specifying the minimum dimensions for dwellings as some sources state I point this out because many histories will state that a house had to be 8 by 10 10 by 12 12 by 14 and one documentary says 12 by 40 please go to slide number 27 the second essential requirement was cultivation the homestead act did not specify how much land needed to be cultivated again good faith was looked for the general land office usually wanted to see evidence that the land had been broken by plow and a crop raised in 1880 it was ruled that grazing could be substituted for cultivation in regions where only livestock could be raised the three year homestead act of 1912 did require entrymen under the original homestead law to have at least one eighth of their entry under cultivation at the time of final proof Congress had previously adopted such a policy under the enlarged homestead act of 1909 please go to slide number 28 if one did not want to live and cultivate their entry for the full five years they were allowed to commute it the commutation clause was provided in section 8 of the homestead act of 1862 it allowed persons to complete their entries to commute them by paying the minimum price per acre $1.25 or $2.50 to do so they had to make proof of settlement and cultivation as provided by existing law granting preemption rights the law as many historians state did not stipulate that the homestead had to wait six months before commuting that was an administrative rule made in 1869 to ensure the good faith of commuters in 1891 Congress increased the time period to 14 months and later made additional changes homestead laws like the forest homestead act of 1906 the enlarged homestead act of 1909 and the stock raising homestead act of 1916 did not allow for commutation of entry please go to slide number 29 filing final proof the homestead act required that after complying with the requirements of residents and cultivation for five years but no more than seven after entry claimants could prove up the general land office did this by having homesteaders along with two credible witnesses attest to having fulfilled the law's requirements as to residents and cultivation initially claimants were asked to answer only a few specific questions but over time questions became more detailed so that the final proof forms were at time several pages in length if the register and receiver at the district land office determined the proof sufficient homesteaders received a final certificate that document signified that claimants were entitled to a patent provided the general land office found no irregularities upon further adjudication please go to slide number 30 on final adjudication homesteaders were issued a patent for the lands they entered patents recite the name of the claimant the legal land description of the lands to which title are being passed and reservations and most easements that the track was subject since the 1830's patents were not personally signed by the president but made by a secretary in the general land office appointed for that purpose in the 1980's the patents for many homestead act entries were not issued for up to six or seven years because they were awaiting adjudication by the general land office under the act of March 3rd 1891 congress directed patents for entries that were not contested or protested to be issued within two years of the issuance of final certificate the patent form used for homestead entries proved up under section two providing for five years of residence and cultivation recite the homestead act of May 20th 1862 as the authority for issuance the patent shown here as a certificate patent the kind issued prior to July 1st 1908 for certificate patents it is important that you know the state and territory where the homestead was made the district land office it was issued under the final certificate number the law under which it was issued homestead act and the certificate number please go to slide number 31 the general land office continued its certificate patent series on July 1st 1908 and introduced a new system called the serial patent system in this example of a serial patent note that this homesteader took lands subject to any vested accrued water rights as well as associated ditches the right for the later construction of ditches and canals by the United States and the reservation to the government of all coal under the act of June 22nd 1910 to identify a serial patent you just need the patent number which is given on the lower left of this document please go to slide number 32 if an individual commuted their homestead act entry under section 8, they received their patent on a cash patent form which recites the act of April 24th 1820 the general sales authority for public land like certificate homestead patents you need to know the state territory land office the fact that it is a cash patent and where the entry was located slide number 33 in addition to paying for commuted homesteads by cash one could use military land warrants or various types of what was called script if that is used for proving up on a commuted homestead you need to find you need to go through those series to find your homestead patent file slide number 34 not everybody was successful under the homestead act there were two ways in which homesteads were canceled first relinquishments that was a voluntary surrender of an entry before 1800 lands covered by a relinquished homestead entry could not be re-opened by the commissioner of the general land office under the act of may 14th 1880 when a relinquishments was filed in the local land office the lands immediately became subject to entry by others under the law relinquishments could not be sold but it was a common practice slide number 35 then there were cancellations there were many reasons the general land office could cancel a homestead entry abandonment of an entry by a settler was a common reason and contests filed by third parties alleging failure on the part of a homesteader to fulfill some requirement could also result in cancellation the general land office could cancel an entry if it felt it was fraudulent or the final proof found defective in all cases homesteaders had the hearing where all parties could present testimony and evidence a party could then appeal an adverse ruling rulings made by registers and receivers were reviewed by the commissioner of the general land office that official decisions could be appealed to the secretary of the interior and in rare instances the secretary's decision could be taken to the federal court please go to slide number 36 record keeping it was of great importance to the general land office various types of finding aids were maintained at both the district land offices and the general land offices headquarters in Washington DC this allowed land officials not only to identify and locate geographically individual entries and filings on public lands to ensure the protection of the rights and interests of individual corporations states and territories that are at errors in record keeping please go to slide number 37 the most important records that the general land office kept were the track books congress directed that track books be maintained in 1800 and to this day the bureau of land management uses a variant of this record track books were intended to provide users with a way to determine the status of public lands within a township at a glance readers could determine what lands had been entered the laws under which entries had been filed the names of associated persons and entities being a set of track books as did the general land offices headquarters for researchers this record used to be the most important way to find all homesteads as it will be shown later there is now an easier method for finding patented homesteads but for relinquished and canceled homesteads this is still a very important record please go to slide number 38 prior to July 1st 1908 the general land office also kept records called abstract register books a set of these books was kept by the kind of entry homestead desert land timber culture and the action, original entry or final certificate at both district land offices and the general land office headquarters entries and proofs were entered in the order received and numbered consecutively for original entries the number assigned became the application number for proofs the number assigned was the final certificate number which would eventually become the patent number homesteads commuted to cash entries will be in cash register books and appropriate military bounty or script register books for those actions please go to slide number 39 serialized record system this was devised and started on July 1st 1908 the new record system was intended to provide for better efficiency and accountability commonly referred to as the serialized record system all applications were arranged by district land office as before but rather than assigning applications according to the type of entry homestead, desert land timber culture, etc all were filed together the applications numbers were then assigned in consecutive numerical orders starting with 01 by each district land office slide number 40 please another record devised by the serialized record system were alphabetical index cards each district land office maintained a set as did the general land office headquarters each card has the name of the land office name of the applicant the post office of record the serial number assigned for each entry and for each entry and finally made by that individual or entity the alphabetical index makes finding persons homesteads after 1908 simple please go to slide number 41 in addition they also created serial register pages this is essentially an abstract of every entry that is made so in case you are missing a case file you can at least get a sense of the process the individual had to go through please go to slide number 42 as said before prior to 1908 files are always filed according to territory state land office and type of entry this is important to keep in mind because if you go to the National Archives and you say you want homestead patents number one the question is which homestead patent number one do you want do you want homestead patent number one for Denver Colorado's land office or do you want one for Lincoln Nebraska's land office this slide will describe some ways in which you can identify and order up case files please go to slide number 43 it is continued on to this new page the National Archives can read it there is also a link which will send you to the National Archives and they will have more information on how to order files please go to slide number 44 okay let's research a homestead I have chosen the entry of a Fritz Richard to give you an idea of the trials and tribulations you might encounter please go to slide number 45 it is important to remember when researching for a homestead act entry keep in mind that the words homestead and homesteading are often generic as the land department observed in 1887 the expression homestead loss has more than once been interpreted by this department in a generic sense so as to include settlement laws besides the homestead law proper settlers and others were often more loose in using the words the railroad company broadside advertisement to the right offered its grant lands for sale as homesteads settlers and their descendants often refer to their entries under other public land laws or purchase from third parties like railroad companies as homesteads so don't be surprised when your homestead research results in learning that someone did not take up land under the homestead act please go to slide number 46 finding a patented homestead the bureau of land management has made this much easier with its new GLO records website here you can research by the name and location you can get a person's land patent when researching for names be aware that the last name spelling can vary rich richards name is spelled three different ways in the various records we will look at richard and richard in one record his first name is given as Frederick many reasons can explain such occurrences in this case part of the explanation is careless record keeping but also the use of the name richard in his citizenship certificate you cannot find unpatented homestead entries using GLO records website slide number 47 oh wait can we go back to slide number 46 we pulled up the GLO records site trying to find frith richard I do find him here listed twice he got a patent in 1901 he got a patent in 1915 I look up those patents they're not homesteads the family tells me that he certainly homesteaded in the late 1800s so what's going on I look on this page and I see that there's an entry for a man named frith richard could that be him could the BLM have accidentally put his name incorrectly please go to slide number 47 I look at the patent the patent says it's frith richard well okay it's not the guy I'm trying to find it's not mr. richard as we will find out later this is his patent he could have asked for a curative patent to correct the error but he did not as we look at this patent there are several things of importance to look at one look at the homestead certificate patent number in the upper left corner it's number 398 under the central city land office also note that his entry or application is number 640 please go to slide number 48 okay we haven't found mr. richard for certain at this point so we need to go to some other records let's go to the track book we know from the 1901 and 1915 patent that he had land in township three north range 81 west we go to that track book we start going through it and we find all of a sudden hey there's an entry for frith richard which I've underlined in red and look says it's application 640 and it also notes that it's patent number 398 those are the numbers we saw on the patent to frith richard what the heck is going on if we hadn't found it in the track book we could have gone to the next record please go to slide number 49 this is the abstract register book if we had gone through that we would have run across mr. richard again it's application number 640 and in red it's written that he got a final certificate of 398 looks like we maybe found him let's go to slide number 50 let's pull up his his case file from the national archives in washington dc here we find even though the patent says it's frith richard on the front in his case file it says frith richard I think we found our person let's go to slide 51 here in his case file we find his application for entry here you will see he'll say that he's this form tells us that he made entry in 1887 however he states he made settlement in october 1884 the township plat was approved in 1883 and filed at the district land office after why did mr. richard wait 3 years after making settlement before making entry notations in the track book and other records reveal that mr. richard made a preemption act of 1841 filing in october 1884 for this land but did not prove up under the law why is not known to keep the track he had settled he then was forced to make an entry under the homestead act of 1862 slide number 52 among the papers in his file is his citizenship paper and in this we will note that while his name is spelled correctly throughout most of the document at one point his name is changed to richard now why this happened is not known but it is clear that he did not intend to change his name because remember in 1901 in 1915 he received patents under the name richard please go to slide number 53 perhaps the most important document in the case file for mr. richard is his final proof which was made in 1892 in it he claims to have made substantial improvements when compared to his application dated you can see that he constructed a number of new buildings in the five years since he had made entry in 1887 to verify the statements made and attested to and to attest to his good faith the law required richard to have two witnesses of his choosing answer questions about his residence and improvements at the end there is no question that mr. richard made his homestead act entry in good faith for the purposes of establishing an actual home to the exclusion of a home elsewhere perhaps the most telling proof is a 2015 atlas for colorado that shows that his lineage still owns the richard ranch so as this example shows finding a homestead entry can prove to be a difficult task but it can be done however for finding most homesteads especially those that went to patent the research will be straightforward please go to slide number 54 so here I've provided you with a few public land terms which goes on to slide 55 please turn to slide 55 and then please go to slide number 56 this is a listing of the public land state so this gives you an idea of where homesteads could be entered please go to slide number 57 and I have provided you with some suggested reading most of them admittedly are somewhat on the academic side but most of them are pretty good with that I think I'm going to go to slide number 58 this is where I've got my illustrations slide number 59 please and I guess now it's time to be grilled thank you so much for your presentation that was very informative we do have several questions that have come from our online audience so if you're ready we'll start right in let's do it let's do it so our first question is are all of the documents associated with homesteads available online for example an application the patents and the proofs are those available online and if yes is there a web page that you could refer us to you can find only a few documents online going to that BLM's GLO records website there you can find the patents that somebody was issued they're in the process of trying to put up track books but if you want to look at a case file you need to go to the National Archives one in Washington DC and order it they have an order form that's listed in one of my pages on where you need to go and they will then provide the document but for the most part you're not going to find most of the public land documents you can find surveys on that GLO records site but those are incomplete so sometimes you have to go to the Bureau of Land Management to get copies of the survey okay thank you for that answer and then specifically where can we locate the track books for research well track books are located in a variety of locations first there is a master set the GLO headquarters set is at Archives 1 in Washington DC the regional archives have many of the track books but they won't always for example before the National Archives was created and the land office was closed either the district land office track books and other records were sometimes destroyed or they've ended up at state historical society so if you're let's say well let's take Minnesota and North Dakota they both have GLO land district office records in their historical society so you may have to search around a bit to find where a track book is the GLO website is trying to get the BLM's GLO website is trying to get track books up on their site right now I think they only have three states okay thank you for that informative answer at this time I would like to also introduce Maureen Baker to help answer our questions Ms. Baker is an archivist with the National Archives at Denver and subject matter expert for land records so she is in the same room with Mr. Moon so thank you for joining us Maureen thank you feel free to jump right in so going on to our next question several years ago the National Archives Homestead National Monument University of Nebraska and others started an effort to digitize homestead files what is the saddest of this effort so my understanding and Jim you might know more since you worked with homestead a little bit but my understanding is that we got Nebraska taking care of but other than that I think it's still a work in process I think but it's part of the issue of funding for the project but I'm not 100% certain on that and I can certainly look that up and put a more thorough answer up on our History Hub site under the land records and I could even do a blog about it well thank you very much Maureen I appreciate your jumping in we have at least three more questions so the next one is you mentioned the amount of acreage a person could homestead increased could you please tell us what that amount is and explain why the government allowed for larger homesteads whoa fairly complicated answer but let's make it say mostly 160 well first in Kansas with the Kincaid Act of 1904 Congress began to increase acreage but the most important ones were the enlarged homestead act of 1909 it increased it to 320 acres they were going on the assumption at that time that the Great Plains was a hard place to farm and that a person needed more acreage so they'd come out with this new agricultural practice called dry land farming and the idea was that you would cultivate half your land one year and that you would leave it follow the next or half your land follow and you could switch it around in that way you know keep regenerating the land so they went ahead and increased it to 320 acres let me note too that for a homestead of 160 acres you could take out another 160 under the enlarged homestead act to fulfill the 320 acre under that law for stock raising it was because it was mainly for grazing and cattle needed a lot of land particularly in the semi-arid west they would go to 640 acres of course 640 acres not enough land this law in many respects was a failure a lot of agricultural experts at the time thought that you needed 100 head of cattle to support a family and the 640 acres a lot of people said couldn't support more than 10 to 25 heads and I guess that's my trying to make my answer short thank you it sounds like there's much more next question is there an easy way to tell the date of your family's patent well you look at the patent it will be dated on there it gives you the date that the patent was issued okay but the thing to remember is and like I pointed out sometimes patents lag final proof by 6 to 7 years so don't look at a patent if somebody says well I patented in 1892 and therefore he probably must have settled in 1887 that may not be the case that patent lag for that 6 years or something he could have made his homestead 10 or more years previously but the patent itself will have the date that the patent was issued it said researchers had just the number so let's say it's like Mr. Richard where it's 398 we know that that's going to be pre-1908 because it doesn't start with a zero no that applications only start with a zero the serial patents are numbered or whatever so we have to look at when the patent was issued to know whether you got it well again it gets kind of complicated there are ways to tell whether you got a certificate patent or a serial patent serial patents are tight for the most part but I don't know hopefully that answers the question okay hopefully it does I'm sure it did I have three more questions how would you start your research for families homestead if they did not patent the land and it was not listed on the GLO website well I mean that's a difficult one I mean the first thing is you have to have a big idea of where they would have settled the only other the only thing I could suggest is for example if it's after July 1st 1908 go to that alphabetical index card like I said Archive 1 in Washington DC has the master set give them the name of the person and see if it shows up provided the last name is spelled correctly that's probably the fastest way after July 1st 1908 before that you really have to have a sense of where they might have settled and then you can either go to the track book if you kind of have a township in range that you think they might have been in go through that page by page hoping to find them looking at all the townships around and slowly going out or go to the register book for homestead for a particular land office and just you know page by page looking for your name it will not be an easy process and also the question comes down to like I said before just because somebody says Grandpa Joe made a homestead act entry it might not be a homestead act entry it might have been a preemption it might have been a desert land who knows so it's not going to be easy hopefully this next one is an easy one it's about military did military rank impact the amount of acreage that a veteran got from military service well now we're going into military land bounties and those were only given like I said before the homestead act of 1862 and yes rank did account for that but under the homestead act soldiers were given certain privileges certain concessions by congress and one of them like I said they could apply up to four years of their service time in the civil war towards their five years they could move up in one year in other cases there were some situations where a homestead could only answer 80 acres well later congress said well if you're a veteran of the union army then you can make it 160 and they would then allow even for additional entries elsewhere to make up that 160 acres hopefully that answers that question oh that's interesting thank you next question is about the glow web page on the glow record site some of their entries are in red ink do you know what that red ink means sometimes they double if you look usually if you look up above you'll see the same entry before I don't know you'll have to talk to the Bureau of Land Management I did work for them I left in 2000 I actually worked for a company that helped them put together that GLO records website but you really will need to deal with the Bureau of Land Management to find out what that's all about okay fair enough last question for the day my ancestor patented land in Texas late 1850s early 1860s if this was not a homestead what kind of patent was it that would this be researched through the GLO as well no you cannot research it through the GLO website Texas is not a public land state Texas came into the union after being an independent republic and congress provided that they would retain title to the land within what is now Texas so all of that would have been state law so you will have to call the Texas Historical Society and ask or the Texas State Land Department website to see how you can find a homestead in Texas thank you very much you have lots of compliments on here for your answers and your great presentation so thank you Jim and Maureen if our presenter did not get to your question please send an email to inquire at narah.gov and please reference this particular session and with that I am turning the microphone over to Vernon Smith this concludes our sessions for the 2019 virtual genealogy fair thank you for joining us if you missed a lecture the videos and handouts will remain available on the fair website and from this YouTube page thank you for participating if you have lingering questions check our website visit us in person or send an email to inquire at narah.gov we will now have closing remarks I am pleased to welcome to the stage the National Archives Executive for Research Services Ann Cummings hello I would like to thank everyone for participating in this very successful seventh virtual genealogy fair our early numbers show that we had over 11,000 people participating on Facebook and YouTube and the viewers will keep growing since the videos remain available on the fair website and YouTube we hope that this event has provided you with practical guidance and advice for tracing your family's history through easily accessible federal records we ask that you take the next 30 seconds to complete the online evaluation your post fair feedback is very useful and helps us shape future presentations to better meet your needs I want to thank staff responsible for making this fair a success Vernon Smith the manager of the fair Andrea Matney for her coordination of the fair Amber Forrester for introducing the sessions and communicating with the audience via chat Jamie Atkinson Julie Reed Jason Winston Alexis Van Dyke Brian Cipperly and Eric Wright Mosby for the audio visual support without these hardworking people the fair would not have been possible thank you to all the speakers Kelly Osburn Darren Cole Rebecca Collier Sarah Holmes Elizabeth Burns Nathaniel Patch Cody White and James Moon your presentations provided us with new ways and ideas to utilize federal records thank you to all the staff that helped us with the communication and logistics for the fair this includes Marion Kleinman for raising awareness and excitement for this fair Hillary Parkinson and Kristen Albritton for their social media expertise who have been helping us with Twitter and Facebook feeds throughout this event Mary Ryan and James Worsham for editing today's materials Rana Husan for updating the fair's poster design Cynthia Campbell and Scott Barton for printing it Randall Curry and Joshua Johnson for supporting us with information technology and Marie McDonald for her supporting role with the archivist welcoming remarks thank you to everybody who worked to make this event accessible to all this includes Kathy Loomey for creating accessible documents Halina Lawson for coordinating a transcriber and Christina Himes for the transcriber who has been typing everything that we said today through live captioning thank you everyone for your participation and your continued interest in genealogy and the records maintained at the National Archives we truly look forward to next time