Roots & Branches

The Official Archives Blog

Learn More About our New Experience on Archives.com

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Something look different? To better serve our users, we've created a new experience for you on Archives.com. Due to an older infrastructure, we are not able to continue to develop our features or expand our collections on the old Archives.com. We've created this new experience for you to give you access to more content With this upgrade, in the coming months, you can expect the following: Updated collections Improved ancestor... Read More »

Search - Learn More

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Learn More About Search on Archives Archives.com has billions of family history and vital records. Use the strategies below to help you find your family. How does search work? When you run a search on Archives, we do our best to match our results to the name, date, and location information you provided in your search. If we do not have a record that meets your exact search criteria, we... Read More »

Search - Too Many Results?

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Too Many Results to Look Through? If you are looking for someone with a relatively common name, you may have a large number of results to look through. Adding more details to your search will give you more relevant results at the top, but will not reduce the number of results that you receive. Remember that the most relevant results will always be at the top. Archives includes search results... Read More »

Search - Can't Find What You're Looking For?

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Can't Find What You're Looking for? Solution: Look for information about the person in a different record type. We may not have a specific record you are searching for, but we may have the information you are looking for in another record type. Using our filters you can browse different record types and collections to find the information you need. 1. Change your seacrch results' record type by changing the... Read More »

Searching Archives Using Filters

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Learn More About Search on Archives Archives.com has billions of family history and vital records. Use the strategies below to improve your search and help you find your family. Can't Find What You're Looking for? Solution: Look for information about the person in a different record type. We may not have a specific record you are searching for, but we may have another record with information about the person you... Read More »

12 Million New Vital Records Available on Archives

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Whether your ancestors were in Virginia, the American West, or somewhere in between, you'll want to take a look at the latest collections on Archives.com. We recently added nine new collections of birth, marriage, and death records with more than 12 million records. Let's take a look at the newest collections: Read More »

Saving Records on Archives.com

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Archives.com tries to make it easy for you to sift through records for the right person you're looking for. Using your Saved Records Folder can help you flag records for later review and make your time searching more efficient. Start by using the Archives search page and searching for the person or record you are hoping to find. Once you have clicked to see a record that you think might... Read More »

Using the New York State Census on Archives.com

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The censuses are a great resource for finding your ancestors in the U.S., but what about state censuses? The U.S. Federal Census is taken every 10 years and enumerates the whole United States with the first census being taken in 1790. The 1940 U.S. Census is the most recent census available to search online. Often individual states would conduct their own censuses that would take place in the off years... Read More »

How Do You Know What Records Exist?

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As your research moves from state to state, you begin to realize that things aren't always the same. Those birth and death records that New England towns kept in the 1600s and 1700s? Towns in Virginia weren't keeping them then. How do you know when a certain location started keeping records? Here are a few resources. Read More »

Yearbooks On Archives.com

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Have you ever found a parent's old yearbook? It can be a lot of fun looking through old class photos and seeing which sports teams and clubs they were a part of. Archives.com has a great collection of both high school and college yearbooks going back to the early 1900s for you to search. How do you search this collection? It's easy. Starting on the Archives search page, simply click... Read More »

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