On December 12, 1942, 2nd Lt. Jack E. Williams and his crew were flying over the coast of France when, according to his report, “We hit the ground; that is, made a crash landing, at 12:40, after having been violently attacked by fighters.” The actions of Williams and his crewmates following the crash are documented [...]

For the next two NARA Coast-to-Coast features we are going to write about naturalization records.  This week we will discuss naturalization in general and the records you may be able to find at the National Archives.  Next week we will discuss naturalization for minor children, women, and aliens in the U.S. military. Naturalization is the [...]

The National Archives recently created a new “Inside the Vaults” video about our citizen archivist initiative. The video features Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero discussing the contributions of the public to the National Archives as well as two citizen archivists, researcher Jonathan Webb Deiss and educational cartoonist Jon White, discussing their work [...]

Did you know that you can find references to important historical events in our records? You’ve probably already seen some of what I’m talking about. Sometimes it’s obvious, as in the case of the Carpathia arriving in New York City on April 18, 1912 with the survivors from the Titanic. Sometimes, however, you can stumble [...]

Ever wonder what exciting new projects the many employees at NARA are working on? The “What are You Working On?” blog feature aims to introduce a variety of NARA employees and highlight some of the exciting projects we are working on around the agency. Check for this blog series on Wednesdays! This week, we introduce [...]

The minutes from the Researcher Users’ Group meetings on August 27th (PDF) are now available on the Archives.gov page for the Researcher Users Group at the National Archives in the Washington, DC Area. Please join us for our next meeting at 1 PM on Wednesday, September 29th, 2010 at Archives II in College Park, Maryland [...]

When I started this series of blog posts on immigration records, I mentioned that the Federal government began documenting alien arrivals in 1820, in fulfillment of the requirements of the Steerage Act of 1819.  So, can you still find any information in federal records about alien arrivals PRIOR to 1820?  As a matter of fact, [...]

Today, guest blogger Elizabeth Carrington from the National Archives at Kansas City has written a special NARA Coast-to-Coast post announcing the opening of over 300,000 Alien Case Files from the records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. I find when I approach new records what I really want to understand is how a particular item [...]