How can I search the Census Records?
You can access census records many different ways:
- Visiting the National Archives Building in Washington, DC or one of our regional facilities located in
Anchorage,
Atlanta,
Boston,
Chicago,
Denver,
Fort Worth,
Kansas City,
Laguna Niguel, CA,
New York City,
Philadelphia,
Pittsfield, MA,
San Francisco, and
Seattle.
- Visit State Archives or
State Libraries.
- Contacting public libraries, historical societies, and other research facilities.
- Renting microfilm reels through our microfilm rental program with public libraries.
Your local public library may help arrange the loan.
- Purchasing rolls of the microfilm from us.
- Using online services, such as
ancestry.com or
heritagequest.com, which have digitized
many census holdings from the National Archives.
(Available free-of-charge at the National Archives facilities nationwide and through many libraries, otherwise by subscription.)
- Check with the USGenWeb project to see if census records from your states of
interest have been transcribed (free of charge).
See both http://www.us-census.org/ and
http://www.rootsweb.com/~census/states.htm.
Please note, due to staffing limitations the National Archives can not conduct census research on your behalf.