NARAtions

A couple of weeks ago I showed you an example of a Mortality Schedule.  Today I want to show you another type of Nonpopulation schedule – this time an Agricultural Schedule.

If you have an ancestor who was a farmer in the mid-nineteenth century, you may be able to find information about their farm.  You may find the total acreage of the farm and how it was used, as well as the value and quantity of produce and livestock on the farm.

For example, in 1870 William Wonduly owned 40 acres of improved land and two acres of unimproved land in the form of woodland.  The cash value of his farm was $8,400.  In addition, he owned three horses and five cows.  He produced 300 bushels of Indian corn and 150 pounds of butter annually.  If you had only looked at the 1870 population schedule, you wouldn’t have learned any of this.

One really interesting thing about William Wonduly’s farm is that it was located in Philadelphia.  Researchers are often surprised to find farms located in major urban areas. 

There are limitations to what you can find in the Agricultural Schedules.  In 1850 and 1860, farms with $100 or greater production value were counted.  In 1870 and 1880, farms with $500 or greater were counted.  So if your ancestor had a very small farm, they may not show up in the Agricultural schedules.  But if they had a larger farm, you may find a lot of information.

There are no indexes to these records.  The Agricultural census schedules are organized exactly the same way as the population schedules, so they are pretty easy to use.  The best way to research them is to find the person you are looking for on the population schedules and make a note of the state, county, and township or enumeration district number.

The Agricultural schedules held by NARA are available on microfilm.  For a list of available records by state, see our website.

NARA has launched a new website, www.archives.gov/open to serve as your source of information about NARA’s openness activities.  You can explore raw datasets, learn about NARA’s developing Open Government Plan, and join in the conversation about what should be included.  We need to hear your ideas for how NARA can conduct its work more openly, and improve public participation and collaboration.  Please post your comments here on the NARAtions Blog and on NARA’s Open Government Idea Forum by March 19, 2010.   We look forward to hearing from you!

On April 2, 2012, the Federal Census Bureau will be releasing the 1940 Census for public access.  For many genealogists and researchers, the release of this census will open new insights into pre-war America, as well as provide opportunities for genealogists and family historians to continue their research into this most recent decade.  Like all previous censuses, the 1940 census will be available in all NARA facilities, this time in digital format (not just microfilm).

In light of this anticipated release (some genealogy blogs and sites have countdowns already!), NARA wants to know which census is your favorite.  Is it the very first census from 1790?  Or maybe you’ve had a lot of luck with a later census?  Tell us which census is your favorite, and why you find it so rewarding!

As part of the Open Government initiative, NARA recently released six datasets available for the first time as raw data in XML format.  The datasets are:

• three editions (2007, 2008, and 2009) of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)
• archival descriptions from the Archival Research Catalog (ARC)
• organization descriptions from the Archival Research Catalog (ARC)

To learn more, see the press release.

American citizens have always had the right under the U.S. Constitution to petition Congress directly to redress specific grievances or recoup financial losses resulting from government actions (such as private property damaged by the Union Army during the Civil War).  In the 19th century, Americans commonly exercised this right, sending hundreds of thousands of private claims to members of Congress for action.  Many of those claims included petitions from veterans seeking pension benefits.  Under established pension laws, the normal application process went through the War Department, but if a pension claim was rejected for whatever reason, the veteran could still appeal directly to Congress for money.  Through faulty memory or loss of records over the years, many veterans of older wars, particularly the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, had a hard time proving their military service.  The private claim thus offered them an important loophole where they could rely upon the empathy of Congress for help.  Most private claims were approved, as Congress rarely passed up an opportunity to honor those veterans by granting them money.  The useful thing about private claims is that they required the same kinds of evidence or documentation as regular pension applications.

So, the moral of the story is this.  If you ever find yourself researching the pension of a veteran ancestor and you discover that a claim does not exist or was rejected, the paper trail may not end there.  Check the private claims in the House and Senate records because there is always the chance you might locate another file with more information about your ancestor’s military service.

Private claims relating to pensions are described in the Archival Research Catalog (ARC) under Accompanying Papers (ARC ID 559821) in the House, and Supporting Papers (ARC ID 576977) in the Senate records.   You can also use the search terms private claims, petitions and memorials, or committee papers.

Most genealogists are familiar with the federal population census records and begin their research with these records.  But did you know that the Census Bureau also took a series of Nonpopulation Census records between 1850 and 1880?  They included mortality, agricultural, industrial, social statistics and defective, dependent, and delinquent schedules. These censuses cover the 12 months preceding the take of the census.  For example, the 1860 mortality schedules record deaths that occurred between June 1, 1859, and May 31, 1860.  The censuses are arranged by year and state. 

Even though, unlike the federal population schedules, these schedules do not list everyone, they can provide valuable information you may not find elsewhere.  For example, the mortality schedules often provide the only record of an individual’s death.  This is especially important if you are researching an ancestor who was a slave, as there are almost never any death records for slaves.

Here we see Louesa Washington (line 18), who was a black female of 25 years.  She was a slave in Frederick County, Virginia and she died in May of 1860 due to consumption.  The schedule indicates that she had been ill for 425 days before she passed away. 

The mortality schedules can be viewed on www.ancestry.com.  The other nonpopulation schedules are available on microfilm.

The National Archives is working on responding to the Obama Administration’s Open Government Directive of December 2009, which was issued to promote new lines of communication and cooperation between the federal government and the American people.

The Open Government Directive is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/documents/open-government-directive.

Stay tuned for updates!

The internet provides lots of great tools and services to help genealogists and historians understand the evolution of relationships and events over time. From teachers to big corporations, researchers at all levels can benefit from these innovative new tools, one of the most effective of which is the interactive map or timeline. One example of these tools can be found through the Digital History website.

Dedicated to using new technologies to enhance teaching and research, this collaborative group based at the University of Houston has created an interactive visualization which allows users to scroll across a United States map and watch cultural, political, and economic events grow and fade away over time. Researchers can read a brief description of each individual event by rolling over its symbol on the map. Clicking on events leads the user to a reputable source of more information.

This interactive map is just one example of online tools. Have you found a great interactive timeline or tool on the web? Where did you find it, and what did it help you visualize?

In my previous blog I mentioned compiled military service records for volunteer soldiers.  While CMSRs are generally recognized as the official record of a volunteer’s military career, did you know they were NOT created at the time the soldier served?  The War Department first created compiled service records in the early 1890s to help verify military service information for the thousands of Union veterans who were applying for pension benefits.  The idea was to consolidate or “compile” all information about an individual soldier from other available sources–including wartime muster rolls, casualty sheets, regimental descriptive books, hospital and prison records–onto a single carded record.  After they finished the project for Union soldiers, the Department went back and created compiled service records for volunteer soldiers from the Revolutionary War through the Philippine Insurrection.  From 1903 to 1927 they also compiled service records for Confederate soldiers. 

As I mentioned previously, the War Department did not create compiled service records for soldiers in the Regular Army since their military service was already documented in the Register of Enlistments.

Thanks to your great feedback on our recent Family Tree Fridays and NARA Staff Favorite posts, we’re considering introducing another specialized series here on NARAtions. This new set of posts, called Tech Tuesdays, would allow us to start a discussion about the cutting-edge technologies that are being developed across the archives field (a topic we’re becoming increasingly interested in as we continue to refine the new online public access catalog and delve deeper into social media!) And of course, we’re always curious about what types of tools users can see proving helpful in their own research.

There are a lot of creative new approaches to making archival information accessible, and we want to know what you think of these “tech-y” ideas! These recurring posts will be our place to highlight the innovative new concepts we come across, and we welcome your comments and thoughts along the way.

To get started, we want to highlight a really interesting find- a project funded by the National Archives of Australia, called The Visible Archives.  This visual representation of the agency’s holdings is being developed by Mitchell Whitelaw of the University of Canberra.

What makes this project stand out is the interactive relationship each series has not only with other series, but in respect to physical space, other records by the same creator, series size, and series with similar topics.  Because of the great number of digitized records, this rich database can be used not only to increase access to records, but also to show an actual relationship between other records in the holdings.

What do you think of the design and usability of the model?  Would this be useful for your research?  On a broader note, what do you think of Tech Tuesdays?  Can you see yourself tuning in?