My colleague, John P. Deeben, recently published an excellent article on records in the National Archives about Union and Confederate Civil War chaplains. It is “Faith on the Firing Line: Army Chaplains in the Civil War,” Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring 2016). Researchers will find it informative and useful.
Year: 2016
Civil War Telegrams
Like the Civil War? Like codes and cyphers? Looking for an interesting do-it-at home volunteer project? This one might be for you.
Smithsonian Magazine‘s article, “You Can Help Decode Thousands of Top Secret Civil War Telegrams,” describes an interesting project recently launched by the Huntington Library (San Marino, California), which holds the telegrams.
The project is partially funded by a two-year grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, which is part of the National Archives and Records Administration.
1950 Census Enumeration District Maps Are Going Online
There’s still 5.7 years to go until the release of the 1950 Census on 1 April 2022, but the National Archives and Records Administration has been working for some time to get ready for that event.
Enumeration District maps involve no privacy restrictions so they can be made available to the public at any time. In “Snapshot USA: 1950 Census Enumeration District Maps,” staff member Ellen Mulligan describes the maps and the behind-the-scenes work needed to get them online.
30 Million and Growing
There are now some 30 million entries in the National Archives Catalog at catalog.archives.gov, according to my best understanding of it. Those entries can be descriptions of governmental entities, record series, files from within those record entries, individual items, and digital images of actual records. The following information comes from the NARA’s Digital Public Access Branch, which manages the Catalog.
This posting takes a peek behind the curtain at the number of offices and people at the National Archives it takes to add descriptions and digitized records to our Catalog.
April 2016 was a fairly ordinary month for the number of descriptions at the National Archives, but when you look at the numbers in this context it is quite extraordinary.
You may have some questions about the graphic above, for example:
What is an archival unit?
Think of an archival unit like an office that specializes in certain kinds of records. We have units based on the kinds of records they hold (e.g. Textual Records or Still Pictures); based on their regional location (e.g. the National Archives at Atlanta, or the National Archives at Fort Worth); and the Presidential Libraries (e.g. the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library or the John F. Kennedy Library).
What is an archival description?
An archival description describes the records we hold in the National Archives. Series descriptions describe records that were accumulated and used together during a distinct period of time. The records in a series are usually arranged in a particular order. A file unit usually describes the equivalent of a folder. A file unit could have a single record in it or many. An item describes a single record – it could be a letter, a report, a photograph, a film, or even a memorandum. The 200,479 descriptions written in April include series, file units and items.
What are the three levels of review?
A staff member writes a description in their archival unit. Then a description reviewer in that office reviews the description and sends it to the Digital Public Access Branch. In Digital Public Access the description is reviewed and edits are sometimes suggested or made to meet the National Archives’ description standards. Then once corrections are made (if needed) it is reviewed once more before it is uploaded to the Catalog.
What does “adding a digital object” mean?
Archival descriptions are written descriptions of records and when possible we also add images, sound or video to the descriptions. In this process we marry a digital file (e.g. jpg, pdf, mp3, mp4) to the written description. Most of the time this can be done in an automatic process after the data is formatted correctly, but sometimes it is a manual process to add the data into the description for every single page.
New and interesting records in the Catalog
Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission: Staff Documents, 2009-2011
Incoming and outgoing correspondence, administrative files, witness lists, records supporting hearings, chronologies of the financial crisis, risk model data, press releases and other records relating to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) interaction with the media.
Branch of Alaskan Geology: Project Chariot Files, 1958-1963
Geologic, geophysical, and geochemical studies and other records created by personnel connected with Project Chariot. Project Chariot was one of several projects planned under the auspices of Operation Plowshare which was developed to explore the use of nuclear explosions for peacetime construction. Project Chariot was a plan to use nuclear blasts to create a harbor at Cape Thompson, Alaska.
Pacific Command, Military Personnel and Services Division: General Records Relating to Bob Hope Christmas Shows, 1970-1972
Correspondence, memoranda, messages, and an after action report pertaining to the planning and preparation for the Bob Hope Christmas programs in Vietnam. Included is an after action report for Operation Holly; diagrams of stage constructions and seating arrangements; records relating to transportation arrangements; and itineraries for the visits.
Call Number 13
The near-infinite variety of records in military pension files is the very essence of a truism: a statement that is obviously true and says nothing new or interesting. And yet, of course, you do not know what will be in any particular pension file until you look. It is in looking that interesting things are found. Egads, another truism.
A Civil War (or later) veteran’s answer to “Call Number 13” is one of those interesting things that will only be found in certain Union Civil War pension files. You can read about Call 13 and the circumstances under which it is found in “Did Your Civil War Ancestor Respond to Call Number 13?” NGS Magazine, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Apr.-May 2016): 35-39.
Those “Boring” Administrative Files….
Most novice genealogists understandably focus on finding vital records of birth, marriage, and death. More experienced researchers know that understanding an ancestor’s full life – as well as finding ways around “brick wall” problems – comes from delving into a wide range of records created by government record keepers at all levels of our federalist structure.
The “wide range of records” includes those “boring” administrative files, which, it often turns out, are not so boring after all. My recent article – “Special Examiners: Records of the Bureau of Pensions’ Efforts to Combat Waste, Fraud, and Abuse, 1862–1933” – in Volume 8 of the Federal History Journal seeks to bring greater appreciation to less-well known records in Record Group 15, Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The Weather Bureau and Genealogy
As the National Capital region continues to dig out from two feet (or thereabouts) of snow, it’s a good time to reflect on the genealogical uses of Record Group 27, Records of the Weather Bureau.
Our farm family ancestors kept close watch of the weather and it certainly affected their economic well-being much more than it does us city dwellers. Today, only 2% of the U.S. population are farm families; in 1790, they comprised at least 90%.
While the Weather Bureau was not established until 1890, the federal government’s interest in collecting weather information dates back to the 1810s, when army hospital, post, and regimental surgeons were directed to keep diaries of the weather. These duties were transferred in 1870 to officers reporting to the Chief Signal Officer. Meanwhile, from 1847 to 1870, the Smithsonian Institution also collected data from voluntary observers throughout the country. All of these observations are available on National Archives Microfilm Publication T907, Climatological Records of the Weather Bureau, 1819-1892 (562 rolls), which is not online.
This can be useful background information that puts flesh on the bones of those ancestors. What was the weather like on the day your ancestor was born? Married? Died? Or at some other point his or her life? You may not find an answer for your precise location, but a nearby one might be close enough. One of my grandfathers was born in November 1888, but his birth was not recorded until the spring of 1889. One suspects weather had something to do with it – even though the winter of 1888-89 was not as epic as that of January-March 1888.
My retired colleagues, Constance Potter and Kenneth Heger, used to jointly give a lecture called “Stormy Weather” that was all about the genealogical uses of weather information from federal records. Connie presents some of that information in De Smet, Dakota Territory, Little Town in the National Archives, Part 2.
The year 1816 was known as “1800 and Froze to Death” (as well as “The Year without any Summer” and other appellations). It was a year when there was frost or snow in nearly every month, and farmers planted crops two and three times only to see them die. Many farm families from the northern United States moved west in 1817 in hopes of a better future.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina displaced thousands from New Orleans, Louisiana, with many never to return.
Weather matters.
In addition to T907, other useful federal records include:
- National Archives Microfilm Publication M1379, Selected Documents from the Records of the Weather Bureau Relating to New Orleans, 1870-1912 (8 rolls)
- Weather Bureau Photographs
- U.S. Government publications in the U.S. Serial Set, which many libraries may have available in an online database. Check with your public library.
- U.S. Government publications found online at
- Hathitrust Digital Library
- Google Books
- Cornell University Library’s Making of America
- Internet Archive
- U.S. Government publications in RG 287, Publications of the U.S. Government
- Records of other federal agencies with an interest in weather phenomena:
- Records of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture, RG 16
- Records of the Hydrographic Office, RG 37
- Records of the U.S. Naval Observatory, RG 78
- Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, RG 111
- Records of the Office of the Surgeon General (Army), RG 112
- Records of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, RG 370
- and others!
Nonfederal sources of information include articles in newspapers in the area where your ancestors lived. For example, the Columbus, Ohio, Statesman of 15 February 1842 reprinted a news item from the Cleveland Herald that described a “Terrible Tornado” in Mayfield, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and Kirtland, Lake County, Ohio, that caused considerable damage. More than 30 people are mentioned, along with their losses (“house unroofed,” “barn unroofed,” “barn demolished,” etc.).
Image: Flooding from Hurricane Katrina, 13 September 2005. NAID 7961819, from Record Group 48, Records of the Office of the Secretary of the Interior.
War Labor Policies Board, 1918-1919
It seemed fitting to start the “Anti-Obscurant” series at the beginning….
Record Group 1, Records of the War Labor Policies Board, 1918-19, is about as obscure as one can get. This temporary World War I agency has the distinction of being Record Group 1 because its records were the first records received by the National Archives in the mid-1930s. The records measure a mere 12 cubic feet, and there are only 7 record series.
The Board was established by the Secretary of Labor on 13 May 1918. It was composed of representatives of the Labor, War, Navy, and Agriculture Departments; the War Industries Board; the U.S. Shipping Board; the Emergency Fleet Corporation; the Railroad, Food, and Fuel Administrations; and the Committee on Public Information. It was abolished in March 1919.
The Board formulated uniform policies for war labor administration, and promoted better housing conditions for war workers. After the Armistice, it considered proposals for canceling government contracts and for demobilization, and made studies of domestic and foreign wartime labor conditions and of labor policies relating to immediate postwar conditions in the United States.
After reading through the descriptions of the agency’s record series, it’s fairly clear that the Board’s records would most interest labor historians, World War I historians, and persons researching Chairman Felix Frankfurter, Executive Secretary George L. Bell, business adviser Herbert F. Perkins, economic expert Walton H. Hamilton, and staff member Helen Bary, who created two of the series.
Record Group 1 is clearly not a useful record group for genealogists—unless your ancestor was involved with the Board, in which case you may learn more than you wanted about the Board’s concerns during its 10-month existence.
This link will take you to description of the records in NARA’s online catalog.
Obscure people and records
Barbara Vines Little, editor of the Magazine of Virginia Genealogy, introduces the current issue (Vol. 53, No. 4, November 2015) with her message, “On the Trail of the Obscure.” She says that “Readers will find this issue replete with the types of records best suited to following the tracks of people who often leave little trace of their presence in a given area.” For researchers seeking hard-to-locate individuals from the late 1700s, the various rent rolls, store ledgers, personal property tax lists, and military clothing accounts published therein may indeed provide vital clues and links.
Obscurity works both ways. Not only do the records contain obscure individuals, the records themselves are obscure–records that the average genealogist with Virginia roots is unlikely to know about. The Virginia Genealogical Society serves the genealogical community well in making unusual records more accessible through its publications.
“Not well known” is one of several definitions of “obscure.” A related word is “obscurant.” As a noun, it’s a person who strives to prevent the increase and spread of knowledge, or, a person who obscures. As an adjective, it means tending to make obscure.
There are so many obscure records in the National Archives that are worthy of greater attention by researchers. Thus, I am launching a periodic series of Anti-Obscurant posts to shed light on some of the many obscure Federal records held by the National Archives and Records Administration. It should be educational for us all.
The Twelve Key 