I’m usually at the downtown building, but I’m here to welcome you to the Know Your Records program today.

I see a lot of familiar faces. We’re so pleased to have you here. The Know Your Records program

is designed to teach you about the National Archives records and how best to go about

doing research so that you can become more independent when you come in and you know how to do your historical research.

We offer not just these weekly lectures. This took place yesterday, as a matter of fact, and we’re repeating it today.

So it’s typically Tuesdays and Thursdays – Tuesdays at the Washington, D.C. building and then again here on Thursdays.

So we have the weekly lectures. We also have symposiums, workshops, the Annual Genealogy Fair coming

up in the spring – April 22nd and 23rd – and I’m hoping that you can come and attend that.

It’s going to be bigger and better than we’ve had in the past. It’s our Fifth Annual Genealogy Fair.

If you’d like more information you can contact me or the rest of the staff at Know Your Records at kyr@nara.gov, or you can call us at 202-357-5333.

You can also check the calendar of events online at www.archives.gov.

So today we have passport applications, 1795-1925. Rebecca Sharp and Katherine Vollen will discuss

how to locate passport applications and how these records can enhance your genealogical research.

Both Katherine and Rebecca are archives specialists at the archives building in Washington, D.C. at the

research support branch, customer services division. Rebecca Sharp specializes in federal records of

genealogical interest and graduated with departmental honors in history from McDaniel College.

Rebecca Vollen also specializes in federal records of genealogical interest and holds M.A. degrees in

history from Pittsburg State University in Kansas and George Washington University.

Today’s program is about one hour long. We hope that you enjoy it. Thank you so much for coming, and enjoy the presentation.

Rebecca Sharp: The Department of State has issued passports to U.S. citizens since 1789.

With the exception of two brief periods during the Civil War and World War I, U.S. citizens were not required to obtain passports until 1941.

It is certainly worth conducting passport application research even if it’s during a non-mandatory

period because you don’t want to assume that there’s no record without checking.

The National Archives holds the passport applications submitted to the Department of State between 1795 and March 31st, 1925.

The indexes, registers, and applications have been reproduced on microfilm. Today we’re going to

discuss how these records can enhance your family research.

The original passport volumes have been microfilmed for preservation purposes. So when you’re doing your

research you’ll want to go to the National Archives building in Washington, D.C.

These four microfilm publications are available in that building. The passport applications are divided

into two timeframes: 1795-1905 and January 2nd, 1906 through March 31st, 1925.

The National Archives does not hold passports themselves, only the applications. If there are still surviving passports,

they would be with either the individual or perhaps their surviving family members.

In addition to the microfilm indexes and registers, there are some additional finding aids that may lead to the records.

Ancestry and Footnote have digitized the applications, and it’s important to know that these databases are available for free at our research rooms.

And they are keyword searchable by name. The passport applications themselves may lead to additional records, and we’ll get into

that a little bit later in the presentation. Passenger manifests may also contain passport information.

The applications that were issued between 1795-1905 include details about an individual such as his or her

physical description, occupation, and maybe additional information about other family members.

So now we’re going to take a look at some of the records. First we’ll take a look at a register.

The person that we’re looking for is a Joseph Rebholz. So here’s Mr. Rebholz. There’s the issuance date here of April 21st, 1891.

And there’s an application listed in this column, and the application number is 25528.

And it’s important to note that these registers can be organized in two different ways; one of which is chronological by issuance date,

and then they can also be grouped alphabetically by the first letter of the surname and then chronological.

Katherine Vollen: We took the information on the register that Rebecca just showed you and found Joseph Rebholz’s passport application.

The number that she gave you, 25528, is right here, and the issuance date and his name is right here.

This is an example of a preprinted application form. A lot of the 18th and early-to-mid-19th century applications are going to be in letter format –

handwritten letters – and we’re going to show you several examples of those in a few minutes.

But regardless of the format that they’re in, they’re supposed to contain certain specific information such as an individual’s age,

their full name, citizenship status, if they’re naturalized or U.S. born citizens, and also a physical description.

And this is Joseph Rebholz’s physical description right here. It says that he’s 53 years old, he has gray blue eyes,

and a medium mouth with a mustache. I’m not really sure what a medium mouth is, but he had one.

And this is an example of a letter request. Some of the records are as clear as the one you just saw.

Some of them are like this. Some are even worse. So you’ll find all sorts of things.

This is a letter request for a passport for Benjamin Silliman in 1805, and it goes into detail about his educational background as well as his occupation.

It says that he has had a liberal education at the College of Yale, and now is a member of the same college in the character

of their professor of chemistry and natural history. And apparently there’s also a

building named after him at Yale. Someone told us that, I haven’t actually confirmed it yet.

These are some more examples of different types of occupations and where you’ll find them.

On the left we have Joseph Levy, and he was a merchant of Japanese goods.

He was about to travel abroad with his wife and three children, all of whom were also listed on the passport up here.

Sometimes you’ll find the names of family members that are travelling with the individuals on the application,

and we’ll show you some examples of that as well. On the right we have an 1897 application for Boris Thomashefsky,

who is listed as a theatrical artist. Neither of these records show the destination of travel. Later records do start showing that.

They will say where they’re travelling and for what reason, and we have some examples of those too.

Rebecca Sharp: Now we’re going to take a look at Mr. Ogden’s letter request for a passport for himself and his family members.

He included the required information about his citizenship, his residency, his age, and his daughters’ ages.

But he also included a very colorful description of his daughter’s stature, and I’ll read a little excerpt from the record.

He says, “I have resided in New York about 39 years and have been a citizen 30 or 35 years. I take with me my three daughters.

The eldest, Sarah, age 21, Grace W., age 16, and Charlotte E., age 12. All short of our age, save the youngest who is thin and rather tall for 12, and is still growing.

Now on occasion with some of these earlier records you’re going to run across some references to previous passport issuances.

And that’s the case for Mr. Maris’s passport application from 1860. Up here you see the previous passport application number of 6019.

And the issuance date is listed as August 23, 1854. If you encounter this kind of reference when

you’re doing your research, you might be able to find an additional record.

And that was the case with Mr. Maris. So this is the record that was referred to on the previous slide.

If an individual travelled frequently there may be multiple applications, and each may provide additional information about the applicant.

It’s important to note that the early applications rarely refer to the previous records, and it’s more

common to see this kind of reference in the 20th century records. It was not required until 1917.

Katherine Vollen: Robert Purvis, whose application we see here, was the son of a wealthy merchant from Charleston, South Carolina.

He inherited a large estate when his father passed away, and this allowed him to live a life of leisure.

He was well-educated and had attended some unnamed college in the east. It just says, “One of the eastern colleges.”

In 1834, when he submitted his application, he and his wife were planning to travel to Europe to visit his relatives.

This is actually a second application for a passport. In response to the first application he received what was called a special form of passport.

And it only identified him as a person of color, and it omitted the phrase, “Citizen of the United States.”

Mr. Purvis received the standard passport that identified him as a citizen when he objected to this special form that he first got.

He was worried that the special form wouldn’t provide him with adequate protection during his travels because it didn’t identify him as a citizen of the U.S.

Prior to the end of the Civil War, the Department of State’s policy towards issuing African Americans U.S. passports was inconsistent.

Sometimes they would get the standard form and sometimes they would receive the special form that Mr. Purvis first received.

They usually granted the special forms, and they usually noted that the individual was free and born in the U.S.,

but didn’t specifically say, “Citizen of the United States.” So that was an issue.

This is another example of the same type of issue. This is 1861, and Robert Morris Jr. had applied for a passport.

He identified himself as African American and said his complexion was colored and his hair was short and curly.

But when he did not receive a response from the State Department in a reasonable amount

of time he contact Charles Sumner, who was a senator from Massachusetts.

Sumner contacted the Secretary of State, and he said that he was hesitant to issue a passport based on the physical description that

Morris had provided, but he would issue one of Sumner submitted the application and only identified him as a citizen.

So that’s why this record is just this single page. And it says, “Please send me a passport for Robert Morris Jr. of Boston, a citizen of the United States.

So if you’re researching an African American ancestor in the passport applications, you’re going

to run into issues like this where you find strange things and they don’t identify them well.

So we’re going to move on to the later passport applications, 1906-1925.

They’re typically two or more pages, and they all consist of the pre-printed forms. You won’t see the handwritten letters anymore.

Along with the standard information such as names, residency, and citizenship, you might find all of these things.

Probably not all in the same application, but you might find these things. You’ll find purpose and duration of travel and destination.

You might find notations of military service, and even copies of birth records.

And beginning on December 21st, 1914, there are photos attached to each record.

This is an index card from 1923. You see Elizabeth ware and her husband Storer Ware listed here.

They each have their own entry on the index card, which means they each have their own passport.

Sometimes you’ll find families travelling on the father’s passport, and everybody will be listed on it.

In this case they each have their own. So when you’re doing research into these you should

check into all possible names, because you never know where the record’s going to be.

So it indicates that their passports were issued on August 17th, 1923. So we went to those records.

On the left we have Elizabeth’s records, and there’s a couple interesting things on here.

First you have all the children listed here. There are six children, and it lists their full names, where they were born, and their ages.

There are a few lines on the preprinted form for this, but they actually had to paste a piece of paper over it because there were so many names.

Also somebody has handwritten their marriage date up here, that’s a little unusual. And it refers to the husband’s application right here.

So when you go to the husband’s application it refers back to the wife’s application. But if you only looked at his

and you didn’t notice this, it would look like he was travelling alone because all of the rest of the family is all listed under her.

They don’t always refer back to each other. And then this is what the Ware family looks like.

So in our next example, we did an index search for Grace Bohmer and found that her passport was issued on December 24th, also in 1923.

And since we have the records up through March of 1925 we should have her record, but when we went to the microfilm this is all we found.

This single sheet of paper. And this actually indicates that the record is still held by the State Department.

When the applications were in use her application was pulled – probably when she applied for a

new passport at a later date after our cutoff – and it tells you right here it was pulled on May 17th, 1926.

So that’s after our cutoff. If you run into something like this you have to contact the State Department to request the records.

And we’ve provided instructions for that in one of the handouts. But we do recommend that you include a copy of

this kind of thing when you contact them, because if they see the date that you’re looking for

– 1923 – they’ll just tell you to contact us and it gets into a loop and it’s not fun for the researchers.

One really important thing to note about these transfer sheets is that Ancestry digitized the passport

applications and they’re in there, but they actually don’t appear to have been indexed.

So unless you know to look for them, you may think that somebody didn’t apply for a passport.

So our recommendation is if you’re looking in the late teens and the 20’s and you don’t find something

on Ancestry, you should still check the microfilm index because they are indexed there.

And it will give you the reference information to contact the State Department.

Rebecca Sharp: As we mentioned earlier, passenger manifests may also list passenger information.

And that usually starts around 1918, and then from there on you may run into this kind of notation.

This is an example of a 1922 manifest. What you see is the naturalization column right here actually has some passport information noted.

Sometimes they’re just going to fill in the blanks wherever they can find a blank space, so in the birth column here there’s also some passport information.

This time it’s noted with just a number and an initial. We found that when we were doing some of our early research with

these records that that’s actually going to be the name of the Secretary of State that’s in charge at the time.

So that will help you figure out when that passport was issued and help you locate the record.

Sometimes the Secretary of State’s full name is listed there, so that’ll be even more helpful. In the case of this manifest,

in the naturalization column it notes the information as “U.S. Passport No.” followed by the number as well as the issuance date.

You’re not always going to get the issuance date, but it’s certainly helpful if it’s there.

If it’s not there, you may be able to estimate roughly when it was issued because the passports

at this time were only usually good for about a year or two or for specific travel.

So you can go and just physically pull the application that seems to correspond and see if your individual.