NERGC Update

If you plan to attend the NERGC Conference in Manchester NewHampshire April 3-6 you have one more day to get the early bird rate which will save you $30. Early Bird registration ends on February 28th. 

See you there!!

Conference website

Planning a visit to the National Archives

Many records are not available on the local level. An in-person visit to the National Archives may be what you need to do. While the main branch is located in Washington, D.C. there are other branches which may be more convenient.  

National Archive Branches are located in

• Washington, DC
• College Park, MD
  Atlanta, GA
• Boston, MA
• Chicago, IL
• Denver, CO
• Fort Worth, TX
• Kansas City, MO
• New York City, NY
• Philadelphia, PA
• Riverside, CA
• St. Louis, MO
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA

Not every branch will have all records, it is important that you check before you visit what records are available at each branch. You can use the National Archives Catalog to determine where the records you want are located. Also check the times when the archives are open, each branch has different hours. 

When you arrive at the branch you plan to visit you will need to fill out call slips so that the records you want to view can be pulled. Arrive as early in the day as possible and try to avoid the weekends. I speak from experience when I say, if you are driving any distance you should probably plan on an overnight visit. Getting and working with the records is likely to take longer than you anticipate. You don't want to rush through things and if you are like me, one visit won't even be enough. 

I did my research and even though the archives in Pittsfield was closer and much easier to get to, I had to go to the one in Waltham, Ma. (Boston). I was wanting to look for naturalization records and ship records and these were in Waltham. 

Staff is available for questions and are very helpful at least in Waltham they are. I now need to go another route to look for my father-in-law's naturalization and it will not be at Waltham since he wasn't a resident of Connecticut in those days. 

What types of records can you hope to find?

Military service records, naturalization records, immigration records, ship manifests, passenger lists, land records, court records, fugitive slave records and a whole lot more.