Archives.com Partners with National Archives on 1940 Census

Today, Archives.com announced that they have partnered with the National Archives to make the 1940 Census available April 2, 2012. 

Here is their announcement, which is also available on their blog at http://www.archives.com/blog/press/archivescom-partners-with-the-national-archives-on-1940-census.html.

"Archives.com Partners with the National Archives to Unveil the 1940 Census

Archives.com Parent Company Inflection Awarded Project to Make 1940 Census Records Free to the Public

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Nov. 17, 2011 -- Archives.com, the website that makes discovering your family history simple and affordable, has joined in partnership with the National Archives of the United States to provide the public with free digital access to the 1940 Federal Population Census beginning on April 2, 2012. In close collaboration with the National Archives, Archives.com will build a website for researchers to browse, view, and download images from the 1940 Census, the most important collection of newly released U.S. genealogy records in a decade.

Archives.com is pleased to contribute to this momentous project, allowing researchers to digitally access the latest release of the U.S. Federal Population Census, the ultimate resource for family historians, at no cost. Census day occurred April 1, 1940 and due to the 72-year privacy restriction these records will be available to the public for the first time in 2012.

CEO Matthew Monahan said, “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to participate in this historic moment and demonstrate our ongoing commitment to the advancement of online genealogy research. Access to 1940 Census records will allow researchers to discover new family members and previously unknown connections to the past. We’re happy to have the opportunity to facilitate the discovery of these records, which document over 130 million U.S. residents, more than any previous U.S. Census.”

The 1940 Census will be available to the public April 2, 2012 at 9:00 AM (Eastern Daylight Time) on a new website created in collaboration between Archives.com and the National Archives. The collection will consist of 3.8 million images that the National Archives scanned from over four thousand rolls of microfilm. Public access to the images will not require payment or registration, and will be available to any person with internet access. The name and web address of the website will be announced at a later date.

Chief Digital Access Strategist for the National Archives Pamela Wright notes, “The importance of the 1940 Census cannot be underestimated. At the National Archives, we have been preparing for the launch of these records for years. We are working closely with Inflection to ensure researchers will be able to search the 1940 Census when it opens next year.” At launch, researchers will be able to search the 1940 Census by address, Enumeration District (ED), and geographic location. Researchers will be able to browse images by ED number directly, or use address or geographic information to locate the appropriate census schedule. 

To learn more about Archives.com and the National Archives bringing the 1940 Census online, please visit www.archives.com/1940census. The National Archives also has published a number of helpful resources available to researchers on their website, which can help you to prepare to most effectively search the 1940 Census on April 2nd. As the project progresses, updates and additional information will be posted at www.archives.com/blog. Join the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #1940Census.

About Archives.com

Archives.com is the website that makes family history simple and affordable. Archives.com is owned and operated by Inflection a data commerce company headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley. It has proven its leadership in the family history industry through its commitment to building powerful, easy to use tools, and helping researchers discover new family connections with its growing database of over 1.5 billion records. Archives.com parent company Inflection was chosen by the National Archives to host the 1940 Census. Learn more about the project at www.archives.com/1940census.

About the National Archives

The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent Federal agency that preserves and shares with the public records that trace the story of our nation, government, and the American people. From the Declaration of Independence to accounts of ordinary Americans, the holdings of the National Archives directly touch the lives of millions of people. The National Archives is a public trust upon which our democracy depends, ensuring access to essential evidence that protects the rights of American citizens, documents the actions of the government, and reveals the evolving national experience. Visit www.archives.gov."

 

Day Two: Our final day at NARA

On this, the second day of our NARA adventure, we were old hands at getting around.  We breezed through the Metro and arrived at NARA about 10 AM.  Security was also a breeze, as well as signing in and getting our bright orange visitor/researcher badges.  We had done all of this before; we were now experts.  (We have also been very fortunate during this visit that the lines have been very short or nonexistent.)

We got another locker for our belongings and immediately hit the Finding Aids area; Ginger had more land records to fill out requests to have pulled, and I was still on the George Schwalls' short-lived Navy career hunt.  The same helpful archivist as yesterday helped me; he was relentless!  At one point, he had like six books open on the table, trying to find anything at all about George Schwalls even being in the CSA Navy.  Finally, he thought he had something and he called upstairs for help from another archivist.  She figured out what I needed to view (or at least she thought she did) and brought down the request form for me to complete.  The items would be pulled at 1:30 PM.

I helped Ginger look for some Confederate service records and then we headed to lunch.  We decided to get out of the NARA building today and walked a couple of blocks to the old Post Office.  It is now full of shops and a food court.  It is quite a contrast... the outside is absolutely beautiful and ornate while the inside is strip mall flashy and tacky.  There must be at least some federal offices still located in the building because at the main entrance where we went in, you still have to go through security.

The Old Post Office Pavilion, 1100 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C.

 After lunch, it was back up to the Central Research Room to view the War of 1812 Service and Pension Records we had requested the night before.  The service records were not robust at all.  Just a couple of "tickets" - one being information transferred from the regiments' muster roll and the other being payroll information.  I obviously need to do some research on the War of 1812 because it seems the men were enlisted for short terms, i.e., one of mine was six months and another was only 60 days.  Anyway, the information in those service records was sketchy at best.

Then I got to the the one pension file I had requested.  It was for my 4th great-grandfather, Jonathan Hesser.  Until the night before this trip, I was not even aware he had served during the War of  1812.  This pension file was no doubt the most exciting find of my trip.  I was not 100% certain that this was "my" Jonathan Hesser, but the pension file convinced me as it listed his wife and the fact that when he applied for the pension, he lived in Ohio.  The file is over 20 pages, and while I have not read every page line by line, I am still very excited to have it.  I look forward to transcribing and sharing it here on my blog.

You can only have one record out at a time, so it was after I finished looking at the military files before I could take a look at whatever the archivist had pulled for me regarding George Schwalls' Confederate Naval service.  It turned out to be two very old books of Naval Special Orders from 1863 and 1864.  It was with great hope that I opened the 1864 order book (George supposedly was transferred from the Confederate Army to the Navy in January of 1865, so the archivist and I were speculating that he received his orders in late 1864.)  I searched the Index of Names... no Schwalls.  OK, don't panic, Liz.  I turned to Special Order #88... which is the one the archivist thought would apply.  The order was several pages long, but there was no mention of George.  Hope is dimming, but there is one more thing I can double-check.  Paragraph 38 was also on George's naval service index card... so I checked that paragraph again for any mention of George... there was none.  As I dejectedly flipped back and forth in the book, looking for anything pertaining to my ancestor, I realized that this book only covered January - March 1864.  Wait a minute!  I need orders for later in the year.  Uh Oh.  It's almost the last pull time of the day:  3:30.  I have to hurry.  So I took the box back to the desk, explained my problem, and they sent me back down to my archivist friend in Finding Aides.  He had me fill out another request form with the other books I needed pulled and told me not to worry about the pull time.   He would get them to me in the Central Research Room.  He did deliver two boxes to me in about 30 minutes' time.  I eagerly began poring over them, and even enlisted Ginger's help.  No Schwalls anywhere.  The Special Order #88 in 1865 did not mention him.  The entire exercise was a bust.  Oh, well, that is the story of my research on George W. Schwalls.  My friend, Donna, swears he was a spy, and now I'm beginning to believe that, too.  It seems that every direction I turn in my research of him, I hit a brick wall.

Here I am, about to pitch a fit because I cannot find George Schwalls ANYWHERE!

 There were no more finds today. This concludes the story of my first ever trip to the National Archives in Washington, D.C.  It was exciting, frustrating, amazing, intimidating, exhausting, etc.  All those adjectives I used to describe the visit in the beginning still held at the end.

SIDE NOTE:  This is my 250th blog post!  

Day One at NARA

Amazing, overwhelming, intimidating, fun, exciting, exasperating, and exhausting are just a few of the adjectives I would use to describe my day of genealogical research at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.  No one can prepare you fully.  You just have to go there and experience it first hand.

The Metro train ride into D.C. from Alexandria went off without a hitch.  It is definitely the best way to get around up here!  So when we arrived on Pennsylvania Avenue, were were not stressed from traffic or trying to locate parking.

National Archives and Record Administration, 700 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C.

Before we ever entered the National Archives building, a security guard out front asked us if she could help us.  I don't think that is what she meant so much as "What is your business here?"  However, I told her we were there to research, and she told us to go on in.  The first item of business is going through a security check point.  No pat downs here, thank goodness.  Then you sign in and are given a visitor/research badge to wear.  If you have a camera, scanner, or other electronic equipment, you present them to the security guard at the desk and the serial numbers are written on a form.  This form and the equipment will be checked against each other when you leave the building to protect against theft, etc.

When these steps were completed, we continued to the lobby and inquired at the desk where to begin.  We were directed into a research room to receive our Researcher IDs.  We had to watch a PowerPoint presentation and fill in our identification information.  Then our photos were taken and we were given our very own National Archives Research ID cards!  We are now official!  The cards are good for one year.  Then we proceeded to get a locker to store our belongings.

We started our research by going to the Finding Aids area to inquire about having land case files pulled for us.  The next pull time - 11 AM - was only 15 minutes away by this time so we were racing the clock.  An employee assisted us in filling out Research Service Slips for the files we wanted pulled.  I managed to get all of mine in for the 11 AM pull; Ginger got half of hers in and was able to get the balance turned in for the 1:30 PM pull.  That was no problem because we were still upstairs in Room 203, the Central Research Room - working with the first pulled land case files we were brought.

It takes about an hour for the requested records to be pulled for researchers, so we went to the microfilm area to learn the ropes there.  It was pretty easy and straightforward, and the employees were very nice and helpful.  The time passes very quickly at NARA so before we knew it, it was time to head upstairs to view our land case files.  That was OK - we could look at microfilm later.

The Central Research Room, Room 203 on the second floor, which is where you go to view original documents, is another security heavy area.  There is a security guard just inside the door that has to scan your Research ID every single time you enter or leave the room.  They also check loose papers you bring in and in my case, asked me to open my Flip Pal each time.  The papers you bring in have to be stamped so they can be differentiated from the copies you may make while there.  We sat at research desks and waited for our documents to arrive.  When they did, it was an out-of-body experience for me to handle the paperwork from the mid-1800s that my great-great-grandfather handled and signed!  I had about 10-12 land case files to pull and copy.  There were a couple in which the pages had stuck together so I had to scan those on my Flip Pal rather than try to copy them on the copier.  In one way or another, I got a copy of every single page of each file.  I will share some of those here in future posts.

You are allowed to leave your research desk and all of your research for up to 60 minutes at a time.  So we took a break about 2 PM and went down to the cafe to have some lunch.  Once we were fortified with food, we went right back to work.

Now at this point, the experienced among you maybe asking, "Liz, why didn't you use your digital camera and NARA's nifty camera tripod stations to photograph the records?"  Well, I'm still a little old-fashioned in my research, and while I love technology, I do not love how my camera produces photos without flash.  (Flash photography is NOT allowed.)  So I would rather take the extra steps (and money) to copy the paperwork on the copiers at NARA, and then scan and save it to my computer when I return home.  It's also instant gratification because I can tell right away if my paper copy came out to my satisfaction.  With my camera, while there is a picture preview window, I can still be fooled sometimes and not realize the photograph is not up to par until after I get home.  Of course, by then, I'm 5 hours away and unable to get another image.

When I finished copying my land case files, I went to the desk and a research librarian placed all of my paperwork, both the papers I had brought in with me and the copies I had made, into a green, locked bag (like those deposit bags business use, except larger).  Those bags are opened by a security guard and your papers are given to you only as you are leaving the building at the end of your research day.  Anyway, I returned downstairs to the microfilm area to begin researching military records.  I had done some research at home and knew most of the roll numbers of the microfilm I wanted to view.  That enabled me to go right to looking up the location of those microfilm in the catalog provided in the research area and pull film to view.  I prepared requests for War of 1812 service records and pension files to be pulled overnight for us to view tomorrow.  I did not find bounty land grands or pension files for my Revolutionary or Civil War soldiers.  And while I finally found one small reference to George Schwalls in the Confederate Navy records, the code was undecipherable to not only me, but several of the reference librarians!  So I remain at the same brick wall with him.

My day was far from smooth sailing.  I forgot batteries for my Flip Pal.  I had an extra set of rechargeable for my camera, but when I inserted them into the scanner, they were dead.  So I had to take the batteries out of my camera and put them in the Flip Pal while holding my breath they would hold up through the land case files.  I went upstairs to view those files and forgot to add money to my ID card for making copies.  The machine in Room 203 that does this was not working, so I had to go back downstairs to the Cashier's Office to add $10 to my Researcher ID.  (This works as a debit card and makes paying for copies so much easier.)  Then when I went back downstairs a few hours later to view microfilm, I had left the locker key with Ginger.  Another trip upstairs and back down for that.  Some days my clumsiness/forgetfulness demands a full workout. 

I am sure tomorrow will be much easier now that I "know the ropes."  It will be mostly military records day.  Even if I don't make any earth-shattering discoveries, it will be great to add to my collection of information about my soldier ancestors.  Until then...

We're going to NARA

Headed out today on a new adventure.  Ginger Smith of the Genealogy by Ginger's Blog and I are on our way to Washington D.C. to do genealogy research at the National Archives (NARA).  This is like the big leagues.  While I am very excited, I am also intimidated.  I have read as much as I can on the NARA website, and tried to commit it all to memory, but I am not sure once I walk through those doors if I will even remember who my great-grandfather was, never mind what I can take in, what I have to leave in a locker, which microfilm to look at, or when the pull times are!  I have several pages of notes, so I am just going to have to have faith that I will find something I am looking for.

Among other things, I am looking for the following:

* Civil War Service Record for my great-great-grandfather Comfort Ranney
* Civil War Pension File for Comfort Ranney
* Confederate Naval record for my great-great-grandfather George Schwalls
* War of 1812 Service record for Comfort Ranney
* War of 1812 Service record for Archibald Odom
* War of 1812 Service record for Jonathan Hesser
* Revolutionary War file/bounty land award information for 4th g-grandfather Comfort Ranney
* Revolutionary War file/bounty land award information for Nathaniel Ranney
* Land Records for Comfort Ranney (There are 7 that I pulled off the BLM site.)
* Land Records for Jonathan Hesser (There are 3 that I pulled off the BLM site.)

Is that enough to keep me busy for two days?  Is it too much?  We shall see.  I will share my findings tomorrow, if I'm not too exhausted or cross-eyed from my day of diligent research!

Surely I will have an easier day of it tomorrow.  I mean, riding the Metro to D.C. (We are staying in Alexandria, Virginia) in the sunshine should be easier than driving the entire way from Durham in the rain.  I mean, the ENTIRE way.  I hate driving in the rain.  I-95 was especially scary with the semi-trucks throwing streams of water behind them.  In addition, it got dark at about 5:30 because it was raining!  So to say that I am looking forward to seeing the sun tomorrow would be an understatement.

We did take a break on the drive and stopped at IKEA in Woodbridge.  We do not have one in Raleigh/Durham - the closest one to us is two hours away in Charlotte - so it was a treat to visit. I only picked up a few little things and still managed to spend $30! 

 

Our great adventure continues tomorrow...