NARAtions

Last week John showed you an example of an unusual find in a pension record – a Fraktur which was used by a widow or other dependent to prove their relationship to a deceased soldier – and asked if anyone had found anything else unusual or revealing.  Even more “typical” documents can reveal a lot of information about the daily life of a pensioner or his family,  something you might not otherwise find. 

William Graham was 64 years old when he submitted this document in support of his Revolutionary War pension application in 1820.  The pension laws in effect then required him to prove not only his service, but also his need for monetary support.  The inventory seen here lists his personal property. 

He owned very little, including two hogs valued at $5.00, and a broken kettle worth 18 cents.  The total value of his property was $10.53½.  In a letter that follows the inventory, he writes that he and his wife are too old and ill to work, and that he also needs to support an unmarried daughter who lives with them.

You can see the rest of William Graham’s pension application on www.footnote.com, to learn more about his wife, Mary, and their children as well as his military service from 1777 to 1783. Similar records for other Revolutionary War veterans can be found in NARA’s series “Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Based on Revolutionary War Service,” ARC ID 300022.

What else have you found in a pension record that reveals information about the daily life of your ancestor?

There’s no question- the National Archives holds a LOT of stuff. That breadth can be a challenge to explain to new researchers and casual website visitors, whose understanding of NARA collections may be as broad as “all the records made in the U.S.” or as dismissive as “boxes and boxes of boring government paperwork.”

One of our strategies for combating these misconceptions is the creation of topical subject galleries on ARC. By highlighting some of NARA’s lesser-known records, as well as classic research staples, we’re able to introduce users to a much richer spectrum of American history than they may have expected. Would you guess, for instance, that the National Archives at Denver’s collections include records from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show? Or that the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library has a photo of the first couple with Michael Jackson (sequins, white glove and all!)

As the pages continue to evolve, we’d love to hear your input on what new topics should be included, as well as which of the current ones you’d like to see get some more attention. What do you think?

This week’s highlighted question comes from Dan in NARA’s Motion Pictures (NWCS-M) department. The unit has been looking for some time at new models for delivery of NARA’s film, video and audio holdings as it struggles with keeping the aging analog reference collection alive and well. Given limited resources, the problem requires a multi-faceted solution, and some of this work has already been initiated through digital partnerships. A definitive agreement among many stakeholders thus far is that web delivery of content is highly desirable for our various user groups. The unit will continue to experiment with new workflows and deliverables, and as they get closer to implementing them they’d love to be able to get some user feedback on the process. Dan also points out that NARAtions might be just the place for NWCS-M to get a feel for user preferences that we here at the Archives might not currently be aware of.

Dan’s main question centers around file format preferences for digital video content delivered via ARC. In commemoration of Veterans’ Day, we’ve compiled the following list of military-related motion pictures to give you an idea of the various formats currently in the catalog (hint: click on the “Digital Images” icon to view the video in ARC):

Amazon Trailers (.wmv):
ARC ID 2569716 “Army Medicine” (2:00 trailer provided by partnership agreement. B&W)

ARC ID 69651 “A Day in the War in Vietnam, Tan Son Nhut Air Base and Saigon, Vietnam, 12/1965 – 01/1966″ (2:00 trailer for each of five reels; provided by partnership agreement. Color)

SAMMA Project (.wmv):
ARC ID 2569910 “Materiel Readiness” (full length. Color)

Google Project (.MP4):
ARC ID 38957 “U.S. Bombs Japanese from New Base in the Aleutians [Etc.]: 1943” (full length. B&W)

ARC ID 45022 “The John Glenn Story, 1963” (full length. Color)

Each of the above categories have slightly different specs as to how the files are created, so the goal is to pin down what users think and whether they (you!) find them easy to use. Is .MP4 or .WMV easier to work with? What might you actually be doing with the files you’ve viewed/downloaded? Are the frame sizes and resolutions appropriate for that work? Are there other formats that would work better for a significant number of users?

Any suggestions you can give would be greatly appreciated, and would go a long way towards making sure that the new Motion Picture online resources are as researcher-friendly as possible.

We’ve loved reading your suggestions and comments about sharing NARA’s holdings on Flickr, and it’s been interesting to see which images people are marking as favorites. All of this got us wondering about which records NARA insiders are particularly fond of, so we asked a few of our experienced colleagues for their picks. This second installment comes to us from

Cynthia Fox – Deputy Division Director Archives I Textual Archives Services (NWCT1)

“Petition for a Writ of Certiorari from Clarence Gideon to the Supreme Court of the United States, 06/05/1962″

One of my favorite documents is the original petition for a writ of certiorari submitted to the US Supreme Court by Clarence Earl Gideon. The case, best known as Gideon v. Wainwright, [890 October Term 1961] reported as 372 U.S. 335 (1963), is a landmark case in United States Supreme Court history in which the Court unanimously ruled that state courts are required under the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution to provide counsel in criminal cases for defendants who are unable to afford their own attorneys.

Clarence Earl Gideon was living in Florida in June of 1961, when he was charged with petty larceny. Because he could not afford an attorney, he was forced to represent himself in the State Court. He was convicted of burglary and sentenced to five years in the Florida penitentiary. He filed suit against the warden of the penitentiary claiming that his Constitutional rights had been violated. The Constitution stated that he had the right to counsel. It did not say, “if he could afford one.”

His case went to the United States Supreme Court. His original petition was written by hand on jailhouse stationary. He was not allowed to have a pen, so it is written in pencil. He had to borrow a pen to sign the petition. The Court decided in his favor and his case changed the interpretation of the Sixth Amendment. This is what democracy means to me and that’s why I believe in the statement about the National Archives that says, “Democracy starts here.”

Record Citation:
Petition for a Writ of Certiorari from Clarence Gideon to the Supreme Court of the United States, 06/05/1962
ARC Identifier 597554
Textual records of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1772-2007
Textual Archives Services Division (NWCT1R), National Archives Building, Washington, D.C.
Item from Series Appellate Jurisdiction Case Files, compiled 1792-2006

Do you know where your family was living in 1935?  Did your grandfather work for the WPA or the CCC?  The 1940 census may provide the answers to these questions and more.

The 1940 census won’t be released until 2012, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start getting ready for it now.  Check out our 1940 web page to see a list of questions asked and some tips to help you start preparing for the census.   There are also some neat training videos produced by the Census Bureau for the enumerators.  We plan to add more information, so keep checking back.

What are you excited about finding in the 1940 census?

Yesterday we asked a question on the blog about transcribing NARA’s handwritten records.

Thanks to those of you who commented for the ideas and examples! We love the idea of crowdsourcing and have been thinking about how we could make it work for NARA. Projects like the one that Craig mentioned at the Australian National Library, as well as others like the Norfolk Transcription Archive in the U.K. and the US GenWeb group here in the States really demonstrate the relatively low-tech power of collaborative effort.

On the techier side, we’re intrigued by the reCAPTCHA project, which utilizes the common bot-blocking software CAPTCHA to allow users to help decipher difficult-to-OCR words in scanned texts. Plus, as Mark points out, there’s the added benefit that the work people are contributing is presented in the form of a quick, entertaining game! We’ve also been interested in exploring some of the innovative transcription projects that Jeanne over at Spellbound Blog discussed following THATCamp 2008’s “Crowdsourced Transcription and Collaborative Annotation” session.

Of course, as Craig points out, there are questions of motivation and return on investment that need to be contemplated before undertaking mass transcription projects, and while we’re still just exploring the idea, we’re certainly sensitive to those issues.

Thanks again for the great questions and ideas.  Your feedback always gives us something to think about!

Transcribing billions of pages of handwritten documents in no easy task. Between the effects of time on paper and ink, the vagaries of individual handwriting, and history’s less-than-consistent spelling conventions, making sure historic records are intelligible (much less full-text searchable!) is easier said than done.

What tools and processes do you suggest we use to transcribe NARA’s billions of pages of handwritten documents quickly and efficiently?

Family research at the National Archives centers on the use of federal records.  To start the process, we always advise researchers to first consider how their ancestors may have come into contact with the federal government during the course of their daily lives.  If your great-grandparents purchased a homestead in Nebraska, they probably filed an application at a federal land office.  If your Boston ancestor sailed on a whaling ship after 1796, he might have obtained a seaman’s protection certificate from a Customs official to prove his U.S. citizenship.  If your ancestor volunteered for military service in the Civil War, he probably signed an enlistment form supplied by the War Department.

There are all kinds of activities and situations that could have resulted in a federal government paper trail, some of which might surprise new researchers. If you’ve had some experience in the field, we’d like to hear your ideas about citizen-government interactions over time, and the kinds of records that might have resulted.

We are happy to announce that we are going to start having posts on Fridays that are related to family history and genealogy research — with an emphasis on online research and access. John and Katherine will be joining our team of bloggers, and they plan to take turns posting. Look for the first post next Friday, October 30th.

If you have any suggestions for topics you would like them to cover, questions you would like them to answer, or documents you think they should feature, just let us know.