Genealogy -- the art and science of learning about our past, about the history of our families, has become one of the most popular pastimes of millions of Americans. From military and war records, immigration and census files, to colonial-era maps, these resources of the U.S. government can help you find your past.
Of the world's premier collections of U.S. and foreign genealogical and local historical publications dating back to 1815. Learn how to prepare for your research and how to use the extensive genealogical resources of the Library of Congress.
Now featuring data from the public release of the 1930 census of 123 million people, the Census Bureau will not help you find your ancestors. However, researchers often locate their ancestor’s address using census city and enumeration district directories. Census data is one of the most often used tools of genealogical researchers.
NARA’s extensive genealogical resources feature the popular "soundex" indexing system useful for looking up people by name in the 1880–1920 censuses and in twentieth-century immigration records. Other popular resources include military service and war records from pre-Civil War through Vietnam, Indian Bounty Land Applications, passport applications and many more.
Featuring extensive genealogy notes and articles, "Prologue" has, for over 30 years told the story behind the history from the First Continental Congress to the conflict in Vietnam. A print version of “Prologue” is available for $16 per year.
Old and new maps can help you track down facts about a branch of your family. How? In the United States, birth, death, property, and some other kinds of records are normally kept by the county governments. If you can name the place where an ancestor lived, maps of that place may also show the county seat where useful data about your kin can be obtained. Who has the best maps of America? The USGS.
Look up information about almost 2 million physical and cultural geographic features in the United States. Cemeteries, towns, courthouses and post offices, just to name a few. The Federally recognized name of each feature described in the data base is identified, and references are made to a feature's location by State, county, and geographic coordinates.
The General Land Office (GLO) of the Bureau of Land Management provides live access to Federal land conveyance records for the Public Land States. This Web site also provides access to images of more than two million Federal land title records for Eastern Public Land States, issued between 1820 and 1908.
From the National Parks Service, the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System is a computerized database containing very basic facts about servicemen who served on both sides during the Civil War. The initial focus of the CWSS is the Names Index Project, a project to enter names and other basic information from 5.4 million soldier records in the National Archives.
Genealogists, historians and just folks will be fascinated by this collection of over 7 million digitized and fully searchable images of historic materials including photographs, manuscripts, rare books, maps, recorded sound, and moving pictures.
