Historical documents

This is a picture of Algot Lange. Do you know who he is? I had not heard about him until last week when a patron approached the General Research Division reference desk asking about him. Mr. Lange was a Swedish explorer who wrote two books about his adventures in the Amazon during the early twentieth century. He’s an interesting fellow and a reminder that not all of history has been told: there is not a single entry for Algot Lange in any of our biographical databases nor is he the subject of any book. I decided that was reason enough to trace his story by means of historical documents.

Through a database called Ancestry Library Edition, I was able to find passenger lists recording Algot’s return trips to New York, passport applications, and a WWI draft registration card. I discovered that he was born in 1844 in Sweden but migrated to New York in 1904 and became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1915. His naturalization papers are on file in the National Archive Records Administration. There are also 22 newspaper articles in the New York Times advertising his books and lectures as well documenting his trips to the Amazon. If anyone’s interested in writing about him, I have plenty of sources to direct you to.

The image shown above is a check written for seven million two thousand dollars for the purchase of the territory of Alaska in August 1, 1868. It is one of thousands of historical documents available in Footnote, a database recently acquired by the New York Public Library. Footnote is doing some interesting work in partnership with NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) digitizing and indexing many of their collections, making them searchable and available online. The collections are diverse and include the Constitutional Convention Records, Investigative Case Files of the Bureau of Investigation 1908-1922 (presently known as the FBI), the Pennsylvania Archives and Project Blue Book, UFO investigations from 1947-1969, to name a few. This is an excellent database for primary source documents.

An interesting dimension to this project is Footnote's use of social networking to enrich the collections. Users are allowed to upload their own content, whether photographs, newspaper articles or other kinds of historical documents. They can also annotate or describe documents within the database or create story pages on items they find particularly meaningful or interesting.

They are are still working out their search functions and I have yet to understand their relevancy ranking. Still, the more you work with the database the more you will find. In fact the collection is growing everyday. With all that it has to offer, I think Footnote is beneficial to genealogist and to historians alike.