Reclaim the Records Scores Another Victory for Genealogists

We have written several times in the past few years about the nonprofit organization called Reclaim the Records and its endless battles against governmental agencies on our behalf to open public records. This bold and tireless group is pretty much the David vs. Goliath of the genealogy world, taking on bureaucracy in state after state to ensure that genealogists have access to both indices and records that are, by law, open to the public. In their latest triumph for all of us, they have gone into action against the Department of Military Affairs, and they have won! We now have access to millions of records generated by the Veterans Administration for those military personnel who received benefits during the late nineteenth through the early twenty-first centuries! This victory opens a huge record set that most of us have likely never known about. Read on for all the details!

StLGS Congregations Project News and Farewell to Another Volunteer

(Thanks to Carol Whitton, StLGS Projects Director, for contributing the first part of this week's post.)

As you may know, St. Louis Genealogical Society (StLGS) is currently working on a project to identify, index, digitize, and preserve all St. Louis City and County congregational records. We hope all congregations will choose to participate and allow StLGS to put indexes and images of their historical records on our website. Records we are scanning, digitizing, and indexing include baptisms, confirmations, marriages, deaths, and, in some cases, member lists. During the past ten years, we’ve identified about 1,700 congregations, both historical and existing, in the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County. To date, we’ve completed only a tiny fraction, 112 congregations, with more than thirty more underway. Our goal is to help preserve as many records as we can and make them more readily available to family historians. To do this, however, we need more congregations to share their records, and for that, we need your help!

Reclaim the Records: A Genealogy Group Worth Knowing About

They call themselves "your favorite little non-profit organization that picks fights with government
agencies, archives, and libraries for better public access to genealogical records and historical materials." But, far from being "little," Reclaim the Records has become a powerhouse of behind-the-scenes legal activity that is bringing long-suppressed indexes and records to the waiting hands of eager genealogists.

Although birth, death, and marriage indexes are supposed to be open and available, the reality is that many governmental agencies have taken it upon themselves to block access to them.  Privacy laws restrict access to actual records in all states, but the indexes to the records are not liable to the same restrictions. They are just indexes, and, according to the Freedom of Information laws, they should be open to the public.

Genealogist Brooke Schreier Ganz began the fight to win back records from New York City in 2015, and Reclaim the Records achieved its registered non-profit status two years later. Like St. Louis Genealogical Society, Brooke and her eight-member board of directors are all volunteers; they have no paid staff and rely on generous donations and helpers to move them forward. In the short time they have been active, they have filed Freedom of Information Act (FOI) lawsuits in multiple states (Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Washington, and Wyoming to date) and have managed to win access to millions of records. In spite of massive push back from governmental agencies, they have successfully negotiated the courts and released previously unavailable data online for free. They have gone to battle with few resources and won all of us the right to view marriage, birth, and death indexes that were previously off limits.

You can benefit from their hard work by going to the group's website. Their home page features a list of current lawsuits and record requests. Each of the record requests explains what was asked for and the current state of legislation. More importantly, each of the request graphics is a link to the status of the specific lawsuit. If the suit has been settled, the actual indexes will be posted there. You may be interested to note that litigation is in progress to open the Missouri birth index, for which the state tried to charge $1.5 million dollars! You can read more about that here. If your ancestors came from any of the states that are in the position of withholding access to records, the site invites you to take a records survey and let them know what records you have interest in. (NOTE: They have no jurisdiction over adoption or cemetery records, as those are private and not within FOI boundaries.)

What Else?

While you are on the site, you can sign up to receive their free newsletter so you will know what legislation is pending and be alerted when new records come online. If you want direct access to the records, they are all posted on the Internet Archive, although you will have to search for them individually. And, of course, as a small non-profit doing expensive work on our behalf, Reclaim the Records will gladly accept donations.