Ancestry Magazine

How to find what you need at the archives.

The many traces ancestors left of their activities will be found in several archives or records offices in their home countries and in the United States. Genealogists and family historians should always check the Family History Library Catalog ™ to learn if records from ancestral home towns are available at the Family History Library or in one of its branch family history centers; but often these records are preserved in archives in a forebear’s home country. Experienced genealogists know this and spend money and time writing to and visiting archives that preserve records from the localities in which family members lived. In fact, most archivists in the U.S. and other countries would say that family historians are among their most common visitors. How does a researcher know where to look for records from ancestral communities, and what are the types of records one may expect to find in these repositories?

Finding U.S. Addresses
Many of us have had the experience of visiting a government office or private agency in search of records, only to learn that the records are no longer kept there. Perhaps they’re older records and were retired to a records center to provide space in the office for more current documents. The next question is, where is the records center? Often the staff in the office can tell the researcher where the records are. If staff members do not know, a little research will usually produce the address. A good resource for finding addresses of local, state, and federal archives in the United States is The Ancestry Family Historian’s Address Book (Juliana Szucs Smith, Salt Lake City: Ancestry, 1997).

Finding Foreign Addresses
To find addresses of archives outside the United States, one should check with the reference librarian at a local public or college library to learn if the library has a directory to the archives in the country of interest. If not, the researcher can use the library’s access to WorldCat (Dublin, OH: Online Computer Library Center) or RLIN Zephyr (Mountain View, CA: Research Libraries Group)-or another computer library consortium-to determine if a library in the United States has a guide to the archives of the country in question. Using interlibrary loan, one can obtain books from almost any library. Once the researcher has an archives’ directory, he or she can use the addresses found to correspond with the archives near the ancestral home town—or with the country’s national archives—to learn about the existence of guides to, or inventories of, archives that may have forebears’ records. This process can be simplified by using the Internet.

Going Online
There are a number of books for genealogists who are new to the Internet, including Laurie and Steve Bonner’s Searching for Cyber-Roots: A Step-by-Step Guide to Genealogy on the World Wide Web. (Salt Lake City: Ancestry, 1997); Thomas Kemp’s Virtual Roots: A Guide to Genealogy and Local History on the World Wide Web (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1997); and Cyndi Howells’s Netting Your Ancestors: Genealogical Research on the Internet (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1997). Here are Web addresses for some Internet sites with archives’ addresses:

National, state, and local archives in Germany: http://www.bawue.de/~hanacek/info/darchive.htm#AA

National Archives of Canada: http://www.archives.ca/www/About.html

Local and provincial Canadian archives: http://www.cdncouncilarchives.ca/dir.html

National Archives of the United States:
http://www.nara.gov

Public Records Office (national archives of England): http://www.pro.gov.uk

Researchers without Internet access will find that most college libraries have The World of Learning (Europa Publications, 1998) or International Directory of Archives/Annuaire International des Archives (Munich; New York: K. G. Saur, 1988), which contain addresses of archives in most of the countries of the world. The next questions are: Which archive should the researcher correspond with? Where are the records of ancestors today?

Finding Archives
In the United States, some cities have archives, as do a few counties. The state level of government has its own archives, and records of federal agencies are preserved in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and in nineteen regional archives. To find records from the time period and the locality in which a person’s ancestors lived, researchers should contact city and county clerks near ancestral homes to determine where the records are. State archives or state historical societies in the states in which forebears lived should also be checked. Both local and state governments kept records about their citizens.

Outside of the United States, genealogists should start with the Web site for the national archives of the country in which ancestors lived, or write to the national archives for information about state and local archives in that country. Records about forebears will be in their home town’s archives or in the nearest district or state archives. Before beginning the search for archival resources, genealogists should review the jurisdictional history of the country from which ancestors emigrated. In most instances, ancestors fell under several historic governmental and religious jurisdictions. Cities or rural townships kept records about inhabitants, as did higher levels of government. Today the records genealogists need are in city, district, or state archives with responsibility for historical jurisdictions falling within their present boundaries.

Church Records
Religious records were normally kept on a local level. The parish priest, for example, was responsible for recording christenings, marriages, and burials. Family historians must learn enough about ancestral religious practices to know the name of the community in which family members attended religious services. Often the congregation or parish is still responsible for its own records, including those from centuries past. In a few instances, older records have been sent to a central religious archive for the region. Librarians at public and college libraries can help researchers find the addresses of religious agencies in the ancestral home town or in the state in which the town is located today. A letter to the officers of a local church or congregation will generate information about the location of needed records. If the researcher cannot discover the needed address of a church or church archives, he or she should contact the nearest state archives for information. Archivists will know where religious records in their area are preserved. Sometimes local or state archives are the custodians of religious records from nearby churches, synagogues, mosques, or shrines.

Guides and Inventories
Finding the archives with jurisdiction over the area in which family members lived is only the beginning, however. Next the researcher should try to learn as much as possible about the records preserved there by obtaining guides or inventories describing the records in an archive. A guide provides an overview of the record groups or record collections in an archive. An inventory details the documents in each collection. Inventories often provide the registration or call numbers for each document or document series. In a few instances, archives have prepared a third type of aid for the researcher: an index to names, localities, or subjects in a group of records.

Historians may find archival guides and inventories confusing to read if they are unfamiliar with the way documents are organized in archives. Archivists evaluate document collections as the documents arrive in the archives; they determine which agency, institution, or jurisdiction created the documents; they analyze how they are organized; and they examine their contents. Each agency’s records normally remain organized as they were at the donor agency. After evaluation, each distinct record group is given a registration or classification number. Similar to library call numbers, archival registration numbers are often alphanumeric. Unlike library classification systems, the designation of archival documents sometimes begins with the name of the collection in which it is found, followed by a signature or registration number. The following is an example from the largest archives in the United States.

The National Archives
A look inside the Guide to Federal Records in the National Archives of the United States (Robert B. Matchette et al., comps., 3 vols., Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1995) will reveal that all National Archives records are arranged in record groups. Each record group has its own numeric designation and represents the records of an agency of the United States government. The records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, for example, are named Record Group 85. The records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service District No. 3 (New York City) have the registration or call number 85.5.2. (Record Group 85, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Series 5, file or sub-series 2.) These records are in the regional National Archives in New York City. The Guide lists hundreds of record types which cover every agency of the federal government. Censuses, immigration records, personnel records, military records, and Freedman’s Bureau records are examples of popular sources. Guide to Genealogical Research in the National Archives (rev. ed., Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1985) and The Archives: A Guide to the National Archives Field Branches (Loretto D. Szucs and Sandra H. Luebking, Salt Lake City: Ancestry, 1988) are still the best introductions to the massive resources of the National Archives.

How do family historians determine whether or not an inventory or guide exists for archives that have records from localities in which ancestors lived? If researchers have found the address of an archive, they can write, e-mail, fax, or call the archives to learn if a guide or set of published inventories is available. Even if these books are out of print, they can be sought in libraries in the United States or at the national library of the country in which the archives are located. Those who have access to the Internet can search for published inventories or guides to archives in the catalogs of the Library of Congress, the Allen County Public Library, the New York Public Library, and other large research libraries with Web sites. At local libraries, researchers can search for archival guides or inventories in databases of library computer consortia—such as WorldCat and RLIN Zephyr-that provide access to the holdings of thousands of libraries in the United States and elsewhere.

How to Search
Once an archival guide or inventory is found, it can be ordered from the custodian library through interlibrary loan. The question is, how does one search library databases or catalogs to find specific archive inventories? All materials in libraries are described in catalogs in terms of titles, authors, and subjects. Most family historians will not know the author of an archives’ inventory, or even its title. Another approach is to use the country and locality in which ancestors lived as the search subjects. Perhaps under the country or city, a subheading for archives will be found. Still another approach is to search under the subject heading “archives-Germany” (or any other country) to learn about books that describe archives in the target country. Most computer-based library catalogs permit still another type of search, a keyword search. Any words you enter in the search field will be sought in the catalog. Catalogs contain descriptive notes, placed there by librarians who have examined the books. A keyword search scans all of the descriptive statements in a library catalog as subjects, looking for any that match the search terms entered. If the researcher enters the name of an ancestral town, the search engine in the library catalog will attempt to find any entries in which the name of the town appears.

Instead of searching for guides or inventories to archival collections, why not just write or call the archives to ask about the records they have or ask them to search out an ancestral family from among their records? This is certainly a useful approach, especially if the researcher is making a first inquiry with the archives. However, researchers may have a better idea of the documents they need than an archivist listening to or reading their request. In addition, archives are generally not staffed sufficiently to respond to detailed inquiries about available records or to pursue detailed research requests. Archivists can best answer direct questions about specific records or about persons whose names and life-event dates are known. Family historians who use archival guides and inventories to prepare research requests for archivists receive speedier and more appropriate answers than those who do not.

Two Examples
What can genealogists and others expect to find in a guide to an archives? A search of the WorldCat library database provides two examples: Das Stadtarchiv Dresden und Seine Bestände (Dresden, Germany: Landeshauptstadt Dresden, 1994) and Guide to the Lancashire Records Office (Preston, England: Lancashire County Council, 1985). The first is a guide to the records in the city archives of Dresden, Germany. This guide describes each of the seventeen record groups within the archives and lists the additional finding aids (inventories, indexes, etc.) available for each group. The documents in the archives date from 1206. Each record group has a unique signature number. Signature 1, for example, contains Ratsurkunden (city council charters), and Signature 2, Stadverwaltung bis 1945 (city administration records to 1945). Among other records under Signature 2.1.1 (fifteenth to twentieth centuries) are tax lists dating from the fourteenth century. Signature 2.1.2 (sixteenth to twentieth centuries) includes records about churches and schools, and Signature 2.1.3 (fifteenth to twentieth centuries) contains citizen lists, inhabitant registers, and weekly reports from churches and civil registrars reporting births, marriages, and deaths.

The Guide to the Lancashire Record Office divides the resources of Lancaster County into five record groups: Public Records, Official Records, Parochial Records, Ecclesiastical Records, and Deposited Collections. The documents in these collections date from the thirteenth century. Under Public Records the researcher will find quarter sessions records, police records, charities, electors’ lists, vagrants, deeds, probates, and tax lists, among many other records. The record group titled Official Records contains minutes, regulations, correspondence, and lists of persons depicting almost all aspects of life in the county, such as the borough council, police, guardians of the poor, medical committees, school boards, and school records. Parochial Records contain minutes, as well as records of christenings, marriages, and burials for the Church of England. Ecclesiastical Records pertain to minutes, visitations, correspondence, and other records from the archdeaconries (Church of England) of Lancaster, Liverpool, and Richmond; and the dioceses of Carlisle, Chester, Liverpool, and Manchester. Records from other churches also fall within this record group. Deposited Collections contains documents from charities, societies, businesses, solicitors’ deposits, estates and family muniments, and newspapers.

Genealogists and family historians will find a wealth of information in the archives of the areas in which family members lived. Archival guides and inventories can aid researchers in requesting records searches, ordering microfilm or paper copies of records they wish to search themselves at home, or in preparing for a visit to the archives.

Raymond S. Wright III, Ph.D., AG, a professor at Brigham Young University, teaches genealogical research methods, European family history, and German and Latin paleography.