research for a family tree?
Although any family research project should begin at home, with interviews with family members and an inventory of family records, NARA holds several resources that are valuable for family research. Any way in which an individual comes in contact with the Federal Government is documented in our holdings. The documentation may be in immigration records, naturalization records, or military service records, but the most common area of such documented contact is through census records. NARA has available on microfilm every Federal population census taken from 1790 to 1930, except for the 1890 census which was partially destroyed by fire. In most cases, individuals may be located in the census microfilm by converting the surname into a letter-number combination called the Soundex, and then looking in the Soundex index for the state in which the individual lived. The microfilm resources of NARA are available on a walk-in basis at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., as well as in our r
