Plumbing the Depths of the U.S. National Archives

I guess this is going to be a "plumbing the depths" series. But rather than a numbered series, I will just pick some of the major online record repositories and talk about their resources. By the way, the term "plumbing the depths" means to understand something in detail, especially something that is difficult to understand. I can say with certainty that the U.S. National Archives website is difficult to understand and deal with. As a matter of fact, most U.S. Government websites tend to bloated and difficult to navigate but that is sometimes a good thing because persistent searching will sometimes yield gems of genealogical data. I will refer to the National Archives by its acronym, the NARA (National Archives and Records Administration).

The United States government has been accumulating paper for a very long time. For example, the NARA has some 600 forms to fill out for various purposes. How many records does the NARA have? Well, they don't know. The quantity of paper-formatted textual records is recorded only in cubic feet and in items if the records have been microfilmed. The quantity of nontextual records is expressed both in cubic feet and in items appropriate to each medium. The quantity of artifacts is expressed both in cubic feet and in items. The number of records is expressed in the millions of cubic feet stored. The total number of records could be into the trillions.

How many of these records are available online? This is a complex question since the NARA shares records with other online databases such as Ancestry.com, Fold3.com and FamilySearch.org. To start to understand what is going on, see Digitization at the National Archives (NARA). The NARA does have an extensive list of the Microfilm Publications and Original Records Digitized by Our Digitization Partners but the list has not been updated for about a year.

In essence, determining what is and what is not available in the National Archives can be a real challenge. There are extensive books on the holdings of the NARA. Here is a list of the books that tell what might be available and found with enough effort and a number of visits to the NARA or one of its branches. This list is far from exhaustive.

A Nit-Picker’s Guide to the National Archives, 2014.

Bounty-Land Records at NARA. Arlington, Va.; St. Louis, MO: National Genealogical Society] ; Jamb Tapes, 2011.

Center for Research Libraries (U.S.), Emma S Davis, United States, and National Archives and Records Administration. Holdings List of U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Microfilmed Records, June 1988. Chicago, IL: Center for Research Libraries, 1988.

Millican, Valorie. Native American Research Guide. United States: V. Millican, 2008.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA): Genealogy Page. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2001. http://www.nara.gov/genealogy/genindex.html.

The National Archives. http://gopher.nara.gov:70/0/about/what/fact.txt.

United States, and National Archives and Records Administration. Microfilm Resources for Research a Comprehensive Catalog. College Park, MD: National Archives and Records Administration, 1996.

———. Native American Records at the National Archives. College Park, MD: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. http://www.archives.gov/research/native-americans/.

———. The National Archives in the Nation’s Capital: Information for Researchers. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2001.

———. Using Civilian Records for Genealogical Research in the National Archives Washington, DC, Area. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 2006. http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS113951.

United States, National Archives and Records Administration, Federal Depository Library Program, United States, and Government Printing Office. NARAtions: The Blog of the United States National Archives., 2009. http://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/gpo27785.

United States, National Archives and Records Administration, and Robert B Matchette. Guide to Federal Records in the National Archives of the United States. [Washington, D.C.]: National Archives and Records Administration, 1999. http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/index.html.

———. Guide to Federal Records in the National Archives of the United States. [Washington, D.C.]: National Archives and Records Administration, 1999. http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/index.html.

———. Guide to Federal Records in the National Archives of the United States. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2001.

Washington, Reginald, United States, and National Archives and Records Administration. Black Family Research: Records of Post-Civil War Federal Agencies at the National Archives. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 2003.

The NARA website does have a page for genealogy entitled "Resources for Genealogists." There is also a page entitled "Research Our Records." There is also a list of "some of the Genealogical Records we have online." However, the number of records provided online by the NARA compared to their entire holdings is vanishingly small. In short, if you want to do serious research at the NARA, you must physically visit either the main archives in Washington or Virginia or one of the branch archives around the country. Here is a link to the Locations Nationwide page of the NARA.