Ancestry Magazine

In every part of the country there are college, university, and public libraries, congressionally designated as official government document repositories.

The Government Public ations section was practically hidden in the basement of the small college library. The librarian in charge of the area was ever so gracious and eager to help me-until I said THAT word. “You’re lecturing a genealogy group? Well, you’re really in the wrong place,” she declared. “We don’t have anything in this section that would be of interest to genealogy hunters. What you people want are census records, and we don’t have those. I can show you a pamphlet that will tell you where the federal archives are. That’s where you’ll find all the genealogy collections,” she continued in a strong, authoritative voice.

I thanked the librarian for the referral, but explained that as an archives specialist for the National Archives (as I was at that time), I was familiar with the census and the other “genealogical collections” in my workplace. My brief attempt to convince this woman of the genealogical potential of printed documents in her workplace fell on deaf ears.

She was, of course, correct in saying that “her” Government Depository Library is not a genealogy collection. But, neither is the National Archives, and in fact, the vast majority of sources used by family historians are not found in “genealogy collections.” Most of the records we use were not created or preserved for the purpose of genealogical research, yet they can be rich sources of genealogical information. Such is the case with the government documents or government publications departments.

In every part of the country there are college, university, and public libraries, congressionally designated as official government document repositories. These designated departments receive millions of documents published by the United States Government Printing Office on an ongoing basis. While not all of the repositories will have exactly the same collections, most have the materials I found in this small college depository. Just browsing the shelves convinced me that this “unlikely” source has plenty of genealogic al potential. The following items are just a few of the fascinating things I found:

The United States Serial Set is a collection of 14,000 volumes of bound government publications compiled under the direction of Congress. Documents in the set date from 1789 to 1969 and include detailed information on a wide variety of subjects. Congressional journals, reports on public and private legislation, commission investigations, federal agency reports, statistical reports, and selected special reports of nongovernmental agencies are organized in rough chronological order.

Is there any genealogy in all this? Consider the following found in the set: lists of names and addresses of individuals who have applied for patents, along with descriptions of the items invented; lists of army and navy pensioners, including rank, residence, and amount of pension; requests for pensions; corrections to military records; individual claims for damages; lists of mail carriers; and annual reports on immigration, sometimes providing names and other personal details about passengers. These are but a few examples I found by skimming randomly through the volumes.

To facilitate use of the set, the CIS U.S. Serial Set Index is a 12-volume set in 36 parts. The User Handbook for the CIS U.S. Serial Set Index 1769-1969 should also be available wherever sets are located. If not, you may want to contact Congressional Information Service, Inc., Bethesda, MD, (301) 654-1550, for information on obtaining the booklet.

Perhaps the best known of the military collections in the Government Publications section is the 130-volume set titled War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Published by the Government Printing Office in 1901, it has a separate master index. Loaded with detailed reports and personal names, these volumes can provide eyewitness accounts to events that changed lives and the nation during the Civil War. The Government Document depa rtment also has army, navy, and air force registers dating from 1789 to 1950. For the most part, the military registers are lists of officers in the various branches of the armed forces. They may contain state or country of birth, state from which appointed, military service history, education, and place and date of death. Similar registers also exist for the armed forces reserves.

There is also a set titled Official Register. The volumes I ran across were dated 1816-1861, 1861-1905, 1907-1932, and 1932-, and 1932-1959 and were intended to be a list of “all the officers and agents, civil, military, and naval, in the service of the United States.” In later years, with the tremendous increase in the size of the federal government, coverage became more limited, but the register still contained listings of the higher officials. Registers may contain name, office, compensation, birthplace, and where employed.

Other interesting finds in the repository were printed reports of various agencies and commissions. These are arranged in order of the agency that created the report. What could the National Historical Park and Preserve have that would lend itself to family history? Consider the Historic Resource Study of the Jean Lafitte, Chalmette Unit/Louisiana (129.58/3:J34). Here I found a list of named slaves conveyed in an 1805 sale of land to Jean Baptiste Prevost. Age and job description were listed for each, along with the name of the slave. Fandango, 35, digger; Remy, 45, foreman; Augustine, 35, gardener; Marie Laville, 40, laundry woman; Julie with her child Charlotte, 20 and 7, ironing woman; and the list goes on.

Bringing us right up the last decade, I discovered Decisions of the Employees’ Compensation Appeals Board (U.S. Department of Labor, v. 32, October 1, 1980-September 30, 1981). Here I found the story of a 59-year-old postal worker who was shot in the back on her way to work. She filed a claim alleging that her injury was sustained in the performance of duty. Ironically, her claim was rejected on the grounds that she “voluntarily” reported to work early. There are many details in this and the hundreds of cases I looked at in that single volume. They are too lengthy to describe here, but this should give you an idea of the sorts of things you might find. And all this was discovered by randomly pulling books from the shelves!

No genealogy here? The foregoing examples barely scrape the surface of what can be found in a government publication or government documents department. A Directory of U.S. Government Depository Libraries (Washington, D.C.: Joint Committee on Printing, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990) lists addresses and telephone numbers for these “unlikely sources.” The directory is arranged alphabetically by state and then by city within the state. For a wonderful and more-detailed description of these records, a cassette tape recording of a presentation by Curt Witcher of the Allen County Public Library is available. The presentation, titled “The Unknown Friend of the Family Historian-The Government Printing Office: Using Government Documents for Genealogical Research,” was given at the 1992 Conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the Arizona Genealogical Advisory Board. For more information about the tape, write to Repeat Performance, 2911 Crabapple Lane, Hobart, IN 46342.

Loretto Dennis Szucs is a professional genealogist specializing in Chicago research. She is the author of several books and numerous published articles on genealogical research.