What the National Archives Holds for Family History
Correction: An earlier version of this article said a marriage license was never a federal record. The National Archives page lists possible exceptions for events overseas, in the military, and in the District of Columbia, and the sentence has been rewritten to keep them. That version also treated the naturalization page's two routing rules as the whole answer; the Catalog guide routes those requests by the state where the citizen lived when naturalized, and that third wording is now shown beside them. Corrected 2026-09-18.
Most family searches start with a birth certificate. It is the document people picture sitting in a federal building somewhere, filed under a name and waiting. That is not where it is.
The records at the National Archives “most commonly used by genealogists” include census, military, immigration, naturalization, and land records. Birth and death certificates, marriage licenses and divorce decrees are created by local authorities and, with the exceptions the page names, are not held there. Census records may help point to a jurisdiction.
The Records People Expect to Find, and the Ones That Are There
The National Archives describes vital records as “birth and death certificates, marriage licenses divorce decrees, wills, and the like.” Local authorities create those records, “with possible exceptions for events overseas, in the military, or in the District of Columbia.” They are “not considered Federal records; therefore they are not held by NARA.”
The page sends the question elsewhere. For birth, death, marriage, and divorce records from state and territorial agencies, it names the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics website as the place that tells how to obtain them.
There is still a federal path to a local document. Information collected in census records “may help you to find which jurisdiction you will want to look for vital records in.” A state of birth and an approximate year of birth, reported in a census, point toward a local jurisdiction, which is where the certificate itself would have been made.
What the National Archives Describes as Its Holdings
The National Archives Catalog guide describes what the agency keeps as historical U.S. government documents “created or received by the President and his staff, by Congress, by employees of Federal government agencies, and by the Federal courts in the course of their official duties.” Read that as written, not compressed into a slogan.
Beside it sits a second sentence, from the naturalization page: “a few indexes and records have been donated to the National Archives from counties, states, and local courts.” Neither cancels the other. A person searching runs into both.
The records the National Archives calls most commonly used by genealogists are census, military, immigration (ship passenger lists), naturalization, and land records. That is a description of what gets used most often. It is not a fence around what exists.
Where Five Common Record Types Sit
The table below sorts the record types a person looking for family history most often expects to find, and shows where each one sits. The first column names the record, the second says whether the National Archives holds it, and the third gives what these National Archives pages say about where the record is. It is not a list of everything the National Archives holds.
| Record | At the National Archives? | Where the pages point |
|---|---|---|
| Birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, divorce decrees | Not held — “not considered Federal records”, with the source’s stated exceptions for events overseas, in the military, or in the District of Columbia | The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics page, which the source describes as telling how to obtain birth, death, marriage, and divorce records from state and territorial agencies |
| Federal population census schedules, 1790-1950 | Held | Digitized online; free access at National Archives facilities, where “availability varies”; NATF Form 82 for individual pages |
| Naturalization from Federal courts, before October 1991 | Usually — the records “will usually be” at a National Archives facility, and the source notes that “Federal courts in some states continue to retain their naturalization records” | The facility “serving the state in which the Federal court is located” |
| Naturalization from state or local courts | “As a general rule” not held, though “a few indexes and records have been donated” | “often at state archives or county historical societies” |
| Naturalization dated October 1991 and after | Not held — created by the INS | “now with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)” |
Naturalization is where the sorting gets complicated, and it turns on two things at once: a date and a court.
Naturalization, and Why the Date and the Court Matter
The naturalization page states one thing plainly that is easy to skim past. “It is a voluntary act; naturalization is not required.” The page states the rule and stops there.
Before September 27, 1906, any “court of record” — municipal, county, state, or Federal — could grant United States citizenship, and petitioners often went to the court most geographically convenient for them. Beginning September 27, 1906, naturalization law imposed a fee structure that encouraged the transfer of naturalization to Federal courts. The lower courts took time to let go of the practice.
So the court that handled a case was partly an accident of where someone lived and when. That accident decides where the paper is now.
“As a general rule, the National Archives does not have naturalization records created in state or local courts.” Those records are “often at state archives or county historical societies.”
The federal side is stated directly: “Naturalization records dated prior to October 1991 from the Federal courts are at the National Archives.” The arrangement carries its own qualification. Indexes, declarations of intention, and petitions “will usually be in the National Archives facility serving the state in which the Federal court is located,” and “No central index exists.”
Then it goes further than most people expect. “Federal courts in some states continue to retain their naturalization records.”
Where to ask is less settled than it looks. The naturalization page keys a federal-court record to the state in which the Federal court is located, and keys the lower-court question to the state in which the petitioner resided. The Catalog guide answers the same question with a third phrasing: contact the reference staff holding records for “the state where the citizen lived when naturalized.” The pages do not line up on one key, and a person whose home and courthouse sat in different states meets that gap directly.
Naturalization was generally a two-step process that took a minimum of five years. After two years of residence, an alien could file a “declaration of intention” — “first papers.” Three more years brought the “petition for naturalization,” or “second papers,” and after the petition was granted, a certificate of citizenship was issued.
Those two steps did not have to take place in the same court. One person can leave paper in two jurisdictions.
And the document people most want is usually the one missing. “In most cases, the National Archives will not have a copy of the certificate of citizenship granted to a petitioner.” Instead, “our holdings normally include only the declaration of intention (with any accompanying certificate of arrival) and petition for naturalization.”
The date closes the question at the other end. “Naturalization records dated October 1991 and after were created by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and are now with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).”
Census Schedules, and What They Report by Year
The census is the record the National Archives holds outright, and what it reports changes sharply at one point in the nineteenth century. From 1850 to 1950, details are provided for all individuals in each household. From 1790 to 1840, only the head of household is listed by name; other household members are merely counted in selected age groups.
That is a real limit on how far a name carries. Before 1850, a great-great-grandmother may exist in the federal record only as a tally mark in an age bracket.
Digital images of census schedules are available from 1790 to 1950. National Archives facilities offer free access to subscription databases and to census microfilm, though “availability varies” is attached to that access. The links the National Archives provides to those subscription services come with their own caveat: “they are not endorsements of the services.”
One census year is largely gone. “Most of the 1890 Census was destroyed,” though “partial records are available for some states.” Certain census years — 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 — also had mortality schedules, and the 1890-1900 mortality schedules were destroyed.
The National Archives is also clear about what its staff will not do: “the National Archives cannot conduct census research on your behalf.” The holdings are open. The labor is not included.
What the Federal and Local Divide Means for a Search
One ancestor does not have one address. The naturalization answer turns on a date and on which court took the case. The vital-records answer turns on a local authority, with the exceptions the page names and does not expand on.
The census sits in between. It is federal, it is held, and much of its value here is that it says where to ask next rather than answering the question itself.
What the division mostly does is negative, and that is more useful than it sounds. Knowing that a marriage license was made by a local authority, outside the exceptions the page lists, saves the weeks a person might otherwise spend looking for it in the wrong building. The National Archives pages are unusually blunt about which records those are. Blunt is the right register for this.