How to Get Free Ancestry Records at NARA

One of the biggest repositories of information in the history of world are the records held at the National Archives, a US government agency. In addition to preserving presidential papers, the Constitution, declarations of war, and so on, the Archives also hold incredible amounts of information on ordinary citizens.

Holdings include enlistment records, war wounded, immigration lists, crime and court documents, tribal records, slave manifests, pensioners, etc, etc.
These records can shed a lot of light on your genealogical roots -- your ancestors, the places they lived, and your family history in general.

A small number of holdings at the National Archives are digitized, and directly accessible online. Other records are indexed, but the indexes themselves can be fascinating sources of genealogy and historical information. Here's how to take advantage of the holdings at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

1. **Explore NARA's Website**

   Spend some time on the NARA homepage at archives.gov

   There's a lot of very useful information here, including links to 'Most Requested' records, research tips, and sections for specialists such as professional researchers and genealogists, educators, archivists, and so on.

2. **Visit the Family History Section**

   Archives.gov/genealogy houses some of the key information concerning searching for your ancestors.

   The link to "What genealogical records are online" will take you directly to databases that can be searched online. There are millions upon millions records here, so the odds of finding information on your US ancestors and building your family tree are pretty good.

3. **Search AAD Records**

   Oddly though, the above-mentioned genealogy records link don't cover many of the many databases available.

   At the Access to Archival Databases (AAD) page, there are almost two dozen additional databases to search, including five million records of German, Russian and Irish immigrants to the US, and nine million Army enlistment records.

4. **Don't Overlook ARC**

   The Archival Research Catalog (ARC) is often overlooked as a family history research tool, but it actually contains millions of family names, and snippets of ancestry information like dates and place of birth, spouse information, and so on.

   There's a very good chance of finding ancestor records at ARC, so make sure to take a look.

Resources

• NARA Military Records
• NARA Immigration Records
• NARA ARC
• Additional Ancestry Resources
• Ancestor research in Newspaper Archives
• More newspaper archives