In honor of the many U. S. veterans that have served in our armed forces throughout the history of this great nation, the African American Genealogy Examiner column today will provide instructions on accessing several free records databases available online at the website of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

Over the last six months, this column has discussed the "Anatomy" of the federal census for the years from 1870-1930, not including the mostly-destroyed 1890 census. In this series of articles, each column of the census questionnaire was examined, and clues that will aid your research were discussed. If you have missed any of these articles, you can read them again using the links below: Anatomy of the 1930 federal census Anatomy of the 1920 federal census Anatomy of the 1910 federal census Anatomy of the 1900 federal census Anatomy of the 1880 federal census Anatomy of the 1870 federal census In a discussion concerning the federal census as evidence for genealogical research, however, one must also consider the question: are census records reliable sources?

The PBS program "American Experience" is a wonderful series of documentaries about the history of the United States. The series also has a remarkable online presence, often creating unique sites for each episode of the series.

As a result of a trial partnership with FamilySearch, APG is making available three presentations from the 2009 APG Professional Management Conference, which took place on September 2 at the FGS Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas.

My goal is to have a complete listing for historical alumni, business, city, county, farm, Masonic, rural, social, and other types of directories for the United States and Canada, and then go on to add directories for other countries. There are also lists of resources, articles, and ideas of where to find offline historical directories.

This article is part of a continuing series looking at each federal census individually. Please read the others in the archives of this column. The 1870 U. S. Census was the Ninth Decennial Census. This census is probably the single most important census for genealogists conducting research on African-American families

When the 1860 federal census was collected and enumerated, slavery was still legal within most of the states south of the Mason-Dixon line. The 1860 federal census enumerated only free people of color in its population schedule; slaves were enumerated namelessly on a separate schedule, identified only by slave owner, age, gender, and color.

From CSI to The Maury Povich Show, DNA and DNA testing has become a part of American popular culture. But what is DNA? In simple terms, DNA is a string of proteins that contain coded blueprints for our bodies. It tells our bodies how to grow. We inherit our DNA from our parents, which is where its genealogical value comes in.

Previous posts in this column demonstrated the use of family clusters and neighborhood clusters to identify families in the U. S. federal census. In this post, we will use these same techniques to identify the last owners of a family freed after the abolition of slavery.

In an earlier entry, this column reported on several resources available for online African-American research in Virginia. Many more resources are now available, some becoming so just in the past three months since that report, necessitating another visit to the subject.

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With all the buzz about Twitter being the latest source for breaking news, it may be easy to overlook the fact that Twitter is also a good place to look for information about the past.