International Archives Day: Your Ancestors Left a Paper Trail — Time to Follow It

On June 9, 1948, a group of archivists and records professionals gathered under the auspices of UNESCO and formally established the International Council on Archives. That single meeting — held in the aftermath of a world war that had displaced millions and destroyed untold records — planted a seed. Today, International Archives Day on June 9 is observed worldwide as a reminder that archives aren’t dusty storage rooms. They’re the engine of genealogical research.

If you’ve been putting off that deep-dive into archival collections, consider this your nudge.

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International Archives Day: What Archives Actually Hold for Genealogists

People often underestimate what sits inside an archive. It’s not just government documents or ancient manuscripts behind glass. Archives hold manuscript collections — private papers, letters, diaries, account books, and organizational records that can surface an ancestor’s name in completely unexpected contexts.

Imagine you’re researching the Hollingsworth family of rural Kentucky. You’ve hit a brick wall around 1850. Then you search ArchiveGrid and turn up a county historical society collection — the papers of a local land speculator — that includes a handwritten deed dispute naming your great-great-grandfather as a defendant. That one document tells you where he lived, who his neighbors were, and what he owned. No census record gives you that texture.

That’s manuscript collections doing what they do best.

International Archives Day: Finding Aids: The Map to the Treasure

A finding aid is a structured document that describes the contents of an archival collection. Think of it as a detailed table of contents for a box of records that has never been fully digitized. Good finding aids list folder titles, date ranges, and sometimes individual document names.

Here’s the practical part: most genealogists skip finding aids entirely. Don’t.

Before you visit an archive — or submit a research request — pull up the finding aid and read it. Look for folder headings like “Correspondence, 1887–1902” or “Legal Records – Property Disputes.” Those headings tell you whether your ancestor is likely to appear before you’ve spent a dime on travel or duplication fees.

ArchiveGrid (https://researchworks.oclc.org/archivegrid/) aggregates finding aids from thousands of repositories across North America. It’s the single best starting point for locating manuscript collections, family papers, and organizational records that mention your ancestor’s community — even when your ancestor isn’t the subject of the collection.

International Archives Day:  County and State Archives: The Underused Tier

NARA gets all the attention. Understandably — it holds military records, naturalization files, census records, and more. But county and state archives are where a staggering amount of genealogically rich material lives, often with minimal researcher traffic.

State archives typically hold colonial-era records, land grants, state census schedules, prison records, territorial papers, and legislative petitions. Virginia’s Library of Virginia, for instance, holds free Black registers from the antebellum period — records that are irreplaceable for researchers tracing African American ancestry. [Internal link opportunity: anchor text — “state archives for genealogy research”]

County archives and county courthouses hold deed books, probate files, guardian bonds, and tax lists that predate federal record-keeping by decades. If your ancestor owned land or had an estate — even a modest one — there’s a paper trail somewhere in a courthouse vault.

Call ahead. Seriously. Many county-level repositories have limited hours, no walk-in

International Archives Day: NARA and Its Equivalents

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the obvious anchor for U.S. genealogical research. Military service records, pension files, draft registrations, passenger lists, naturalization records — it’s all there.

But here’s what a lot of researchers don’t realize: NARA has regional facilities. If your ancestor settled in the Pacific Northwest, the National Archives at Seattle holds records for Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Knowing which regional facility holds what can save weeks of misdirected requests.

For international researchers, the equivalent national archives — Library and Archives Canada, the General Register Office in the UK, the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico — operate with similar structures. Finding aids, access policies, and digitization levels vary widely, but the research logic is the same.

International Archives Day: Church Repositories and What They Hide

Parish registers are well-known. Less well-known: many denominations maintain their own dedicated archives. The Catholic Diocese archives. The Quaker meeting records held by Haverford College’s Quaker & Special Collections. Lutheran church archives with baptism records going back to the 1700s.

These repositories don’t always appear in standard genealogical databases. They surface in WorldCat (worldcat.org) — the global library catalog that indexes holdings from thousands of libraries and archives, including religious repositories. If you haven’t searched WorldCat for your ancestor’s surname alongside a county name or religious denomination, do it today.

International Archives Day: Requesting Records: What to Expect

Most archives — NARA included — accept written or online research requests. NARA’s online order system (order.fold3.com or through the National Archives catalog) handles military and other federal records. State archives often use their own portals.

When submitting a request, be specific. Full name, approximate dates, geographic location, record type. Vague requests get vague results, or worse, no results. Include alternative spellings of the surname. Note any aliases. If you have a prior document reference — a file number, a court docket number, a pension application number — lead with that.

Response times vary from days to months. Some state archives are backlogged. Some church repositories are volunteer-run. Budget time accordingly and follow up politely at the 60-day mark if you haven’t heard back.

International Archives Day: Build Your Own Archive Research List

Here’s a concrete action step for International Archives Day: open a fresh document and start building your personal archive research list. For each surname and location in your tree, identify the relevant county archive, state archive, NARA regional facility, and any church repositories. Search ArchiveGrid for manuscript collections. Run WorldCat searches for published finding aids and local history collections.

This isn’t a one-afternoon project. It’s an ongoing resource — one that gets more useful every time you add to it.

The archives have been waiting. June 9 is a fine day to finally go looking.

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Author’s Note: I want to be transparent that this content – International Archives Day: Your Ancestors Left a Paper Trail — Time to Follow It – was created in part with the help of an artificial intelligence (AI) language model – Claude Sonnet 4.6. The AI assisted in generating an early draft of the content, but every paragraph was subsequently reviewed, edited, and refined by me. The final content is the result of extensive human curation and creativity. I am proud to present this work and assure readers that while AI was a tool in the process, the story, style, and substance have been carefully shaped by the author.