Research guides
Where the records are, and how to search them free
Genealogy is mostly knowing which archive holds the record you need. These guides cover every public archive Provara can search by machine — 13 live today, each with what it holds and the licence its own terms grant — and the record types they contain, with the question to ask for each.
By record type
Historic newspapers
2 archives live · Obituaries, marriage and birth notices, local news and legal notices. Often the only record of a death date or a maiden name before civil registration.
Immigration and passenger lists
2 archives live · Arrivals by ship or border: name, age, origin, destination, sometimes the relative they were joining. The bridge between the old country and the new.
Military service and pension files
4 archives live · Enlistment, service, discharge and pension papers. Pension files in particular name spouses, children and witnesses.
Land and homestead records
1 archive live · Patents, deeds and homestead files: where a family settled and when, often with neighbours and witnesses.
Census returns
2 archives live · A household on one day: names, ages, birthplaces, occupations and relationships to the head. The backbone of placing a family in a decade.
Government records
1 archive live · Federal and state records beyond the census: naturalisations, court files, agency records.
Birth, marriage and death records
3 archives live · Civil registration and church registers: the dates and parents that anchor every generation.
Church books
2 archives live · Baptisms, marriages and burials kept by parishes, often the only record before the state began counting.
Notarial records
1 archive live · Contracts, wills, inventories and property transfers witnessed by a notary — dense with names and relationships.
Tax rolls
1 archive live · Who owned or occupied what, assessed year by year — a census substitute where the census is lost.
Cemetery registers
1 archive live · Who is buried where, with dates and plots — the record that often closes a life when no death certificate survives.
Reference works
1 archive live · Encyclopaedic and structured reference data that fixes a place, an institution or an event a record refers to.
Places and gazetteers
2 archives live · Every named place, current and historical, with its county and coordinates — how a vanished village on a record is found on a map.
Digitised books and local histories
1 archive live · County histories, city directories, yearbooks, published genealogies: where a family appears in print.
City and trade directories
1 archive live · A household's address and occupation, year by year, between censuses.
Archive catalogues and finding aids
2 archives live · Descriptions of what an archive holds, so you know what to request before you travel or write.
Historical photographs
3 archives live · Portraits, places and events held by libraries and archives, free to view and often free to reuse.
Manuscripts
0 archives live · Unpublished handwritten material held by archives — family papers, account books, sermons.
Record indexes
1 archive live · Name indexes to births, marriages and deaths released by public agencies — the finding aid that tells you which certificate to order.
Wills and probate
1 archive live · A will or an estate file names heirs, spouses and property, and fixes a death to a court date.
Inquests
1 archive live · Coroners' inquiries into sudden deaths: cause, witnesses, circumstances.
Institutional records
1 archive live · Hospitals, asylums, gaols, schools and poorhouses: admissions and discharges that place a person on a date.
Historical maps
1 archive live · Where a farm, a street or a parish sat when a record was made, and what it was called then.
Letters, diaries and papers
1 archive live · Personal and institutional papers held by libraries and archives: the texture of a life, and sometimes the only record of it.
Shared family trees
0 archives live · Collaborative trees compiled by other researchers. Useful for leads, never for facts: a tree is a claim, not a record.
By archive
live Chronicling America (Library of Congress)
Library of Congress · US · Historic US newspapers 1690s–1963 with OCR text: obituaries, notices, local news
live National Archives Catalog (NARA)
U.S. National Archives · US · Passenger lists, naturalizations, military service and pension files, homestead/land files, census images, federal records
live Open Archives (207 archives: Netherlands, Belgium, France, Suriname + US indexes)
Open Archieven (Coret Genealogie) · NL/BE/FR/SR · Civil registration (birth, marriage, death), church books, population registers, notarial and tax rolls, militia — 207 archives
live VA Nationwide Gravesite Locator
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs · US · 8.4M veteran and dependent burials: names, birth/death dates, cemetery, branch, rank, wars
live Wikidata (notable people & places)
Wikimedia Foundation · World · Structured facts on notable people (birth/death, places, relations) and every gazetteer place; CC0
live Internet Archive (texts)
Internet Archive · World · Digitised books: county and town histories, city directories, yearbooks, genealogies, church histories
live USGS GNIS place names (incl. historical)
U.S. Geological Survey · US · Every named US place, current and historical, with state, county and coordinates
not yet connected Digital Public Library of America
DPLA · US · Metadata for photographs, letters, diaries, yearbooks, local records from 4,000+ US institutions
live Reclaim The Records (US vital indexes, via Open Archives)
Reclaim The Records / Open Archives · US · Birth, marriage and death INDEXES released under FOIA: New York State & NYC, New Jersey, Missouri, Nebraska, Mississippi, Maryland, Connecticut; BIRLS veteran deaths
live Riksarkivet (Sweden) — registers & archives
Swedish National Archives · SE · Indexed birth, marriage and death register entries (parish, date, parents), plus archive volumes and AI-transcribed text
live DigitalNZ / Papers Past (New Zealand)
National Library of New Zealand · NZ · Papers Past newspapers 1839–1980s (full text), plus NZ library, museum and archive collections
live Queensland State Archives indexes (Australia)
Queensland State Archives via data.qld.gov.au · AU · Immigration and passenger indexes, naturalisations, wills, inquests, hospital deaths, gaol registers, orphanages, Boer War — 12 of 128 CC BY indexes searched live
not yet connected Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek / Archivportal-D (Germany)
Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek · DE · Finding aids and digitised objects from ~270 German archives, libraries and museums (emigration files, church-book finding aids, address books)
live Library of Congress — Prints & Photographs
Library of Congress · US · 1.2M+ photographs, prints and drawings: portraits, studio and news photography, places, military, FSA/OWI
live Wikimedia Commons (free-licensed photographs)
Wikimedia Foundation · World · 147M free-licensed media files: historical photographs, portraits, maps, scanned documents from GLAM partners
not yet connected FamilySearch (partner review pending)
FamilySearch International · World · Billions of historical records and the shared Family Tree — via hint → link-out only, per partner terms
not yet connected PROV Victoria Collection API (Australia)
Public Record Office Victoria · AU · Wills and probate, inquests, land, immigration indexes — keyless JSON API works
not yet connected Trove (National Library of Australia)
National Library of Australia · AU · Australian newspapers and GLAM collections
not yet connected Digitalarkivet (Norway)
Arkivverket · NO · Censuses 1801–1920, church books, emigrant lists
not yet connected INSEE deaths file (France, 1970–)
Start free
INSEE via data.gouv.fr · FR · Every death in France since 1970: name, birth date/place, death date/place — Licence Ouverte 2.0 bulk files
No card needed. Build and source your tree free; search these archives free; the assistant's research runs on tokens.
Every licence on these pages was read from the archive's own terms on the date shown. Provara proposes only what a record it has read supports, shows the record beside the claim, and marks anything unsourced as a hypothesis. Nothing on this page states a fact about any person.