Family History

The National Archives at Philadelphia offers many records useful anyone researching their family history. Below is an overview of some of our most popular genealogy holdings at the National Archives at Philadelphia. These are just highlights of our vast holdings. Feel free to contact our reference staff for more information about our records, of if you have any questions.

• Naturalization Records
• Census Records
• Ship's Passenger Lists
• Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files
• Draft and Military Service Records

Selected finding aids, including our Guide to Archival Holdings at the National Archives at Philadelphia, are available on our website. For any questions about our holdings please contact our staff. More information about researching family history can be found through Genealogy.

Naturalization Records

Naturalization is the process by which an immigrant becomes an American citizen. Upon meeting residency requirements, immigrants petition the courts for citizenship and take an oath of allegiance. Under former laws, immigrants could petition for citizenship in Federal, state, or county courts.

Depending on the year in which they were filed, naturalization records can provide a researcher with information such as a person's birth date and location, occupation, immigration year, marital status and spouse information, witnesses' names and addresses, and more. Pre-1906 naturalization records only typically provide an immigrant's name and country of origin. In 1906, Congress established the U.S. Naturalization Service by the Basic Naturalization Act of 1906 (34 Stat. 596), which standardized the naturalization process requiring more detail on the naturalization forms.

The National Archives at Philadelphia has the Declarations of Intention and Petitions for Naturalization for the Federal courts in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia for the following time periods:

Dates indicate overall time span of discrete series of Federal Court (both United States District and Circuit Courts) naturalization records in our custody. There are some chronological gaps and incomplete files. In addition to the above-listed numerically arranged declarations of intention and petitions for naturalization, other types of often complex naturalization records exist and may be examined in our Archival Research Room. Please contact our staff for further information, or to schedule an appointment for research. For Federal court records not yet in our custody, contact the Clerk of the Court for that Federal court.

Please note that in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries an immigrant could apply for naturalization in any court: city, county, state, or federal. The naturalization records are held by each court or their repository. The National Archives only holds records for Federal courts. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) possesses a copy of any naturalization record filed after September 22, 1906. There is more information about historical records series held by USCIS, as well as the process for filing a FOIA request with USCIS on their website.

For more information about naturalization records and the process by which immigrants were naturalized check out Naturalization Records, which offers links to a variety of helpful resources.

How to Order

Researchers can submit a request copies of naturalization records by telephone, email, fax (see Contact Our Staff for further information), or through our online ordering system.

If you email our staff, please include the following information with your request:

• Name of the naturalized citizen
• Court or city where the naturalization occurred
• Approximate date of the naturalization or immigration
• Country or place of birth
• Date of birth
• Name of spouse (if applicable) 
• Names of children (if applicable) 

Our staff will search our naturalization indexes and respond to your inquiry to let you know whether or not your ancestor was found in our index, and will either provide you with payment and delivery information or recommendations for further research.

Census Records

Federal Population Census Schedules

The Constitution requires that the Federal Government count the population every ten years to determine the number of Representatives each state sends to Congress. Census records provide basic facts about your ancestors and reveal clues to finding other records in the National Archives. Early censuses provide the name of the head of the household and the number of occupants. Later censuses reveal the names of each family member as well as age, marital status, occupation, state or country of birth, year of immigration, and year of naturalization.

The National Archives at Philadelphia facility provides online access to the Federal population censuses for all states from 1790 to 1930 (though nearly all of the 1890 schedules were destroyed by fire in 1921) through our digitization partners Ancestry.com, Familysearch.org, and Fold3.com. We also provide online access to the Federal population censuses for all states from 1940 and 1950 through a partnership with Archives.com on the 1940 Census Website and 1950 Census Website. 

Other Census Schedules

We also maintain certain non-population and other special schedules taken for various years on microfilm, a list of which we have compiled below:

Census Records after 1950

Census Records after 1950 are not available through the National Archives. However, you may be able to access certain records for specific legal reasons through the U.S. Census Bureau. Please see the U.S. Census FactFinder (the section on Access to Closed Records) for more information. For any questions contact the U.S. Census Bureau directly.
For more information, feel free to review our page on Census Records and check out the many different articles written about the Census from NARA’s Prologue Magazine.

How to Order

Please note that the National Archives at Philadelphia does not undertake searches or produce reproductions of census records. If you need to order reproductions of these records, you can submit your order through our online ordering system or by mailing a completed NATF-082 form to the Archival Operations at the National Archives in Washington, DC.

Ship's Passenger Lists

In an effort to protect immigrants and encourage travel to the United States, the Federal Government required passenger lists beginning in 1820. Since then, over 55 million people have immigrated to the U.S. These immigration records can provide genealogical information including:

• a person's nationality, place of birth
• ship name and date of entry to the United States
• age, height, eye and hair color
• profession
• place of last residence
• name and address of relatives they are joining in the U.S.
• amount of money they are carrying, etc.

The National Archives at Philadelphia provides access to the ship's passenger lists for numerous ports, including Baltimore, Maryland, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and New York, New York. All of these microfilmed records have been digitized by our digitization partners and are now available online through Ancestry and FamilySearch. We have compiled a list of all microfilmed passenger arrival records that have been digitized by the partners below:

* Please note that the above list only consists of passenger arrival records from the ports of Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia that have been microfilmed and digitized. For information about other passenger arrival records, please contact our staff. You can see a complete list of passenger arrival microfilm available at the National Archives on Immigration Records. Also note that not all of the microfilm on the complete list is available at our facility.

You can learn more about Microfilm Publications and original records that have been digitized by our digitization partners and are available online by checking out Microfilm Publications and Original Records Digitized by Our Digitization Partners.

Additional Information:

It can be useful to research other genealogy sources to aid your search for passenger arrival records. Naturalization records, for example, particularly after 1906, can contain specific details of a person's legal entry into the U.S. -- the exact date and means (ship name, for example) of arrival. Census records often show year of immigration.

Please see Research in Immigration Records for more information on passenger arrival records. Other online resources include the following:

• The web pages by Stephen P. Morse 
• Cyndi's List of Genealogical Sites on the Internet 
• A Guide to Interpreting Passenger List Annotations 

How to Order

Please note that the National Archives at Philadelphia does not undertake searches in these records on behalf of patrons. If you need to order reproductions of these records, you can submit your order through our online ordering system or by mailing a completed NATF-081 form to the Archival Operations at the National Archives in Washington, DC.

Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files

Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files are a valuable resource for the study of Chinese immigration and Chinese-American travel, trade, and social and family history from the late-19th to mid-20th century.

The National Archives at Philadelphia holds Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files of District 4, headquartered in Philadelphia, of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. These records were reproduced in NARA Microform Publication M1144 and have since been digitized by our digitization partners and are now available online through NARA's online catalog, Ancestry.com, and FamilySearch.org.

Please note, Privacy Act restrictions may apply to some cases. For more information go to Chinese Immigration and the Chinese in the United States.

Draft and Military Service Records

Most of the National Archives' military records are maintained by other locations. Additional information can be found on our Research in Military Records page.

Feel free to contact our reference staff for more information about our records, of if you have any questions.