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Skip NavigationMenu
* About
* Our Board of Directors
* Our Activism
* Presentations, Slides, Videos, and Webinars
* Press
* Close
* Our “To-Do” List
* Records Survey
* Records Requests
* * Connecticut
* The Connecticut Genealogy IndexMore than 5.5 million genealogical
records to search through...except for the ones the state still has
locked up in an ancient FoxPro database they claim they can't use
Records release mostly negotiated! But many still locked up in the
state's archaic database system All received records online.
* Close
* Maryland
* The Maryland Motherlode: Births, Marriages, Deaths, and
NaturalizationsMore than five million records from the Maryland State
Archives covering more than a century, both the basic text indices and
full vital records certificates 🤩 most of them never publicly
available online before
Records released through successful Maryland Public Information Act
request All received records online.
* Close
* Mississippi
* The Mississippi State Death Index (1912-1943)One young genealogist's
tenacity leads to thirty-one years of Mississippi state history finally
going online
No litigation needed! All records online.
* Close
* Missouri
* Missouri Birth Index, 1920(ish)-2015They tried to charge us $1.5
million for a public records request. Then they decided to ignore the
state Sunshine Law altogether.
Litigation successful! Motion for Summary Judgment granted April 15,
2020
* Missouri Death Index, 1968-2015They tried to charge us $1.5 million for
a public records request. Then they decided to ignore the state
Sunshine Law altogether.
Litigation successful! Motion for Summary Judgment granted April 15,
2020
* Close
* Nationwide
* Beneficiary Identification Records Locator Subsystem (BIRLS) Death
FileWhen a veteran dies, why is their basic service data locked up
forever behind a $300/year commercial website's paywall?
Litigation in progress! FOIA lawsuit filed in United States District
Court (SDNY) on September 17, 2018.
* Billions of Digital Images and Associated Text Metadata Created Through
the United States National Archives and Records Administration’s
Digitization Partnership ProgramWe want it all back.
FOIA request filed with NARA on October 14, 2020
* Social Security Applications and Claims IndexAlmost 100,000,000 public
records have been available only through a $300/year paywalled
commercial website. We're gonna change that.
FOIA request filed with Social Security Administration on September 20,
2017
* Close
* Nebraska
* The Nebraska Death Index (1904-1968)That time we successfully appealed
to a state Attorney General while waiting to board an international
flight
No litigation needed! All records online.
* Close
* New Jersey
* New Jersey Birth, Marriage, and Death Indices, 1901-1903 and
1901-1914We acquired and published the first public twentieth century
vital records indices for New Jersey.
No litigation needed! All records online.
* New Jersey Death Index, 1904-2017Why should these records be available
if you're onsite at the state archives, but not available on the
Internet?
Legal wrangling but no litigation needed! All records online.
* New Jersey Marriage Index, 1901-2016We acquired and published the
first-ever data set of everyone married in the Garden State
Legal wrangling, but no litigation needed! All records online.
* The New Jersey Geographic Birth Index and Delayed Birth Index,
1901-1929Homegrown in the Garden State
Records release negotiated! No legal wrangling needed! All records
online.
* Close
* New York City
* All already-digitized New York City historical records and their
associated text metadata. (Yes, all.)"Release The Kraken!"
Litigation in progress! Case filed February 14, 2022.
* Brooklyn (Kings County) “Old Town” RecordsWelcome to the single
stupidest lawsuit we've ever had to file against a government agency
Litigation in progress! Case filed October 15, 2018.
* Geographic Index to New York City Births, late 19th to early 20th
centuriesA new tool to find people born in New York City, especially if
their birth records had spelling variants or poor handwriting
No litigation needed! All records online.
* Index to New York City domestic partnership records, 1993-2017?All
people and all families deserve to have their genealogical records
available to them.
NY FOIL request in planning stage against NYC Clerk's Office
* Index to New York City Marriage Licenses, 1908-1929What do you do when
a city archive won’t share its records with the public? Fight back.
Read about our pilot project that started it all.
Litigation successful! All records online.
* Index to New York City Marriage Licenses, 1930-1995Yes, you can fight
city hall — and win! Of course, it helps if the city refuses to return
your e-mails and calls until you take them to court.
Litigation successful! All records online (minus Queens 1971-72 images)
* Index to New York City Marriage Licenses, 1996-2017Wait, you mean we’re
gonna have to sue the same city agency again? Over the same records
set? After they lost to us last time?
Litigation successful! All records online
* List of Registered Voters in New York City for 1924Historical voter
data is often covered by Freedom of Information laws. We were the first
to publish this often-overlooked resource online.
No litigation needed! All records online.
* New York City Birth Certificates, 1910-1917They're more than 100 years
old, but NYC won't let us see them.
NY FOIL request in planning stage against NYC DOH
* New York City death certificates 1949-1968 and nullification of NYC DOH
records access rulesRemember that time the NYC DOH ignored ~6,000
public comments unanimously in opposition to their terrible records
access rules?
Litigation in progress! Case filed April 17, 2019.
* Close
* New York State
* Index to Deaths in Albany, New York, 1880-1915Corruption's such an old
song that we can sing along in harmony, And nowhere is it stronger than
in Albany
NY FOIL request filed with Albany City Clerk's Office on September 6,
2017
* Index to Deaths in Buffalo, New York, 1852-1944These records were
sitting on a hard drive in a city government's Inactive Records Center,
not online for public use. We fixed that.
No litigation needed! All records online.
* Index to Deaths in Yonkers, New York, c. 1870-1915"Out there, there's a
world outside of Yonkers..."
FOIL Appeal (constructive denial) sent March 13, 2019
* Index to New York State Births (Outside of New York City),
1881-1942Finally, New York researchers can ditch the microfiche sheets
and join the twenty-first century.
No litigation needed! All records online.
* Index to New York State Deaths (Outside of New York City), 1880-1956It
took us seventeen months of fighting with the government just to get a
list of the names of dead people.
Legal wrangling but no litigation needed! All records online.
* Index to New York State Marriages (Outside of New York City),
1881-2017NYS DOH gave us only half of the files we'd requested, and
initially they didn't even explain why. So we sued them -- and won!
Litigation successful! Case filed August 24, 2018, judgment rendered
March 13, 2019. CASE ON APPEAL BY THE STATE as of May 1, 2019.
* Close
* Washington
* Washington State Marriage, Divorce, and Death Indices, c. 1907-2017The
legislature now wants to lock away indices that have always been
public. Nuh-uh.
Washington PRA request filed with Dept. of Health, Secretary of State,
and State Archives on January 30, 2019.
* Close
* Wyoming
* Wyoming Marriage, Death, and Divorce Indices, 1900-1965Frozen in a
snowbank outside of Laramie? We got your record. Thrown off your wagon
team in Cheyenne? We got your record too.
Coming soon...
* Close
* Close
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WE WANT OUR RECORDS BACK.

AND WE GET THEM! MORE THAN SIXTY MILLION RECORDS RECLAIMED SO FAR

We’re Reclaim The Records, a new not-for-profit activist group of genealogists,
historians, researchers, and open government advocates. We identify important
genealogical records sets that ought to be in the public domain but which are
being wrongly restricted by government archives, libraries, and agencies. We
file Freedom of Information and Open Data requests to get that public data
released back to the public. And if the government doesn’t comply, we take them
to court.

Then we digitize everything we win and put it all online for free, without any
paywalls or usage restrictions, so that it can never be locked up again. Learn
more about our work and sign up for our newsletter.

HELP US RECLAIM EVEN MORE.

Make a Donation Online

We started our work in New York City in 2015, expanded to three new vital
records jurisdictions in 2016, and became a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit in
2017. Your support helps us continue the fight for open records nationwide.

November 2023: Reclaim The Records announces THE MARYLAND MOTHERLODE, an
enormous collection — more than a century — of Maryland birth, marriage, death,
and naturalization indices and vital certificates. Most of these records have
never been available online anywhere before, or were previously only accessible
within the Maryland State Archives building in Annapolis. We used the Maryland
Public Information Act to acquire digital copies of these documents, more than
five million records. Learn more >>

August 2023: Reclaim The Records publishes ConnecticutGenealogy.org, a new
searchable website (totally free to use, of course) with the indices to more
than 5.5 million of the Nutmeg State’s birth, marriage, death, and civil union
records. We’re also still fighting with the Connecticut Department of Public
Health for public access to millions of other years of their state birth index,
currently locked away in a decades-old FoxPro database, which the state is
attempting to claim as a novel kind of FOIA exemption. Learn more >>

March 2023: Reclaim The Records sues the United States Citizenship and
Immigration Services (USCIS) under the Freedom of Information Act, for the
second time in two years*. This time, it’s for the agency’s continued refusal to
process eighty-nine separate FOIA requests made over a three year period about
priceless historical records in the agency’s possession, and about the policies,
procedures, manuals, vendor reports, budgets, e-mails, and calendar entries that
would shed light on the agency’s activities with respect to these records. Learn
more >>
* oh, and we won that earlier case, too 🙂

February 2022: Reclaim The Records sues the New York City Municipal Archives
(yes, again), this time to reclaim and publish digital copies of every
already-digitized historical document held by the agency, including all
uncertified copies of historical NYC vital records. This lawsuit was undertaken
in specific response to the city’s highly unusual new licensing and
“permissions” rules, and their associated fees, concerning public use and re-use
of their historical materials, even for non-profit or educational purposes.
Learn more >>

May 2021: Reclaim The Records submits our lengthy public comment to the United
States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), giving a very detailed
overview of their agency’s failure to make historical immigration and
naturalization files available to the public. We describe how the agency has
been pushing all pre-1951 records requests into an unnecessarily expensive
pathway for access that also subverts the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA),
while at the same time refusing to hand over many disclosable public materials
to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), in denial of their
own agency’s accepted record retention schedules. Learn more >>

October 2020: Reclaim The Records takes on the National Archives and Records
Administration (NARA), asking for copies of hundreds of millions, and possibly
billions, of historical records from the agency, both digital images and the
text metadata that makes them searchable, which were originally created through
their long-running public-private partnership program. These digital records
were solely made available to commercial entities long after their exclusive
“embargo” periods were over, but the files were never made freely available to
the public by the agency, as had been promised for years. We’ve been told that
this is possibly the single largest FOIA request, and soon to be FOIA lawsuit,
in American history. 😳 Learn more >>

April 2020: Reclaim The Records won our Missouri Sunshine Law case! After four
and half years of work, we won our case against the Missouri Department of
Health and Senior Services (DHSS) to acquire and publish the first-ever free
public copies of the Missouri statewide birth index and death index! We were
also awarded our attorneys fees, and in an unusual move, we even won $12,000 in
fines against the agency for four instances where they ‘knowingly and purposely’
violated the Sunshine Law. Read the judge’s ruling, and Learn more >>

April 2019: Reclaim The Records launches our ninth Freedom of Information
lawsuit. It’s our biggest lawsuit ever. We’re taking on the New York City
Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Board of
Health, Commissioner of Health, City Registrar, and the former City Registrar.
We’re fighting for the public’s right to access uncertified copies of ~1.6
million death certificates for New Yorkers who died between 1949-1968. These
records would be open to the public if those deaths had occurred in any other
county in New York State outside the city limits. And we’re also suing to
overturn New York City’s recently-enacted and thoroughly awful rules restricting
public access to historical records. Learn more >>

October 2018: Reclaim The Records launches our eighth Freedom of Information
lawsuit. We’re taking on the New York City Municipal Archives to acquire and
publish a portion of the Brooklyn (Kings county) “Old Town” records,
approximately 143 microfilms worth of material from 1670-1898. These documents
cover births, marriages, deaths — including for many enslaved people in New
York! — as well as school records, tax records, military records, manumission
papers, and more. They’ve never been online before. And yet the NYC Archives
refused to make copies of these valuable records under the Freedom of
Information Law. Learn more >>

RECENT RECORDS REQUESTS

State
All
Connecticut
Maryland
Mississippi
Missouri
Nationwide
Nebraska
New Jersey
New York City
New York State
Washington
Wyoming

NEW YORK CITY BIRTH CERTIFICATES, 1910-1917

They're more than 100 years old, but NYC won't let us see them.
NY FOIL request in planning stage against NYC DOH
Read More

THE NEW JERSEY GEOGRAPHIC BIRTH INDEX AND DELAYED BIRTH INDEX, 1901-1929

Homegrown in the Garden State
Records release negotiated! No legal wrangling needed! All records online.
Read More

NEW JERSEY BIRTH, MARRIAGE, AND DEATH INDICES, 1901-1903 AND 1901-1914

We acquired and published the first public twentieth century vital records
indices for New Jersey.
No litigation needed! All records online.
Read More

NEW JERSEY DEATH INDEX, 1904-2017

Why should these records be available if you're onsite at the state archives,
but not available on the Internet?
Legal wrangling but no litigation needed! All records online.
Read More

INDEX TO DEATHS IN BUFFALO, NEW YORK, 1852-1944

These records were sitting on a hard drive in a city government's Inactive
Records Center, not online for public use. We fixed that.
No litigation needed! All records online.
Read More

INDEX TO NEW YORK CITY MARRIAGE LICENSES, 1930-1995

Yes, you can fight city hall — and win! Of course, it helps if the city refuses
to return your e-mails and calls until you take them to court.
Litigation successful! All records online (minus Queens 1971-72 images)
Read More

MISSOURI DEATH INDEX, 1968-2015

They tried to charge us $1.5 million for a public records request. Then they
decided to ignore the state Sunshine Law altogether.
Litigation successful! Motion for Summary Judgment granted April 15, 2020
Read More

WYOMING MARRIAGE, DEATH, AND DIVORCE INDICES, 1900-1965

Frozen in a snowbank outside of Laramie? We got your record. Thrown off your
wagon team in Cheyenne? We got your record too.
Coming soon...
Read More

THE MISSISSIPPI STATE DEATH INDEX (1912-1943)

One young genealogist's tenacity leads to thirty-one years of Mississippi state
history finally going online
No litigation needed! All records online.
Read More

WASHINGTON STATE MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, AND DEATH INDICES, C. 1907-2017

The legislature now wants to lock away indices that have always been public.
Nuh-uh.
Washington PRA request filed with Dept. of Health, Secretary of State, and State
Archives on January 30, 2019.
Read More

MISSOURI BIRTH INDEX, 1920(ISH)-2015

THE NEBRASKA DEATH INDEX (1904-1968)

That time we successfully appealed to a state Attorney General while waiting to
board an international flight
No litigation needed! All records online.
Read More

GEOGRAPHIC INDEX TO NEW YORK CITY BIRTHS, LATE 19TH TO EARLY 20TH CENTURIES

A new tool to find people born in New York City, especially if their birth
records had spelling variants or poor handwriting
No litigation needed! All records online.
Read More

BENEFICIARY IDENTIFICATION RECORDS LOCATOR SUBSYSTEM (BIRLS) DEATH FILE

When a veteran dies, why is their basic service data locked up forever behind a
$300/year commercial website's paywall?
Litigation in progress! FOIA lawsuit filed in United States District Court
(SDNY) on September 17, 2018.
Read More

THE MARYLAND MOTHERLODE: BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, DEATHS, AND NATURALIZATIONS

More than five million records from the Maryland State Archives covering more
than a century, both the basic text indices and full vital records certificates
🤩 most of them never publicly available online before
Records released through successful Maryland Public Information Act request All
received records online.
Read More

NEW YORK CITY DEATH CERTIFICATES 1949-1968 AND NULLIFICATION OF NYC DOH RECORDS
ACCESS RULES

Remember that time the NYC DOH ignored ~6,000 public comments unanimously in
opposition to their terrible records access rules?
Litigation in progress! Case filed April 17, 2019.
Read More

INDEX TO DEATHS IN YONKERS, NEW YORK, C. 1870-1915

"Out there, there's a world outside of Yonkers..."
FOIL Appeal (constructive denial) sent March 13, 2019
Read More

INDEX TO DEATHS IN ALBANY, NEW YORK, 1880-1915

Corruption's such an old song that we can sing along in harmony, And nowhere is
it stronger than in Albany
NY FOIL request filed with Albany City Clerk's Office on September 6, 2017
Read More

INDEX TO NEW YORK STATE DEATHS (OUTSIDE OF NEW YORK CITY), 1880-1956

It took us seventeen months of fighting with the government just to get a list
of the names of dead people.
Legal wrangling but no litigation needed! All records online.
Read More

INDEX TO NEW YORK STATE MARRIAGES (OUTSIDE OF NEW YORK CITY), 1881-2017

NYS DOH gave us only half of the files we'd requested, and initially they didn't
even explain why. So we sued them -- and won!
Litigation successful! Case filed August 24, 2018, judgment rendered March 13,
2019. CASE ON APPEAL BY THE STATE as of May 1, 2019.
Read More

INDEX TO NEW YORK CITY DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIP RECORDS, 1993-2017

?All people and all families deserve to have their genealogical records
available to them.
NY FOIL request in planning stage against NYC Clerk's Office
Read More

SOCIAL SECURITY APPLICATIONS AND CLAIMS INDEX

Almost 100,000,000 public records have been available only through a $300/year
paywalled commercial website. We're gonna change that.
FOIA request filed with Social Security Administration on September 20, 2017
Read More

ALL ALREADY-DIGITIZED NEW YORK CITY HISTORICAL RECORDS AND THEIR ASSOCIATED TEXT
METADATA. (YES, ALL.)

"Release The Kraken!"
Litigation in progress! Case filed February 14, 2022.
Read More

LIST OF REGISTERED VOTERS IN NEW YORK CITY FOR 1924

Historical voter data is often covered by Freedom of Information laws. We were
the first to publish this often-overlooked resource online.
No litigation needed! All records online.
Read More

NEW JERSEY MARRIAGE INDEX, 1901-2016

We acquired and published the first-ever data set of everyone married in the
Garden State
Legal wrangling, but no litigation needed! All records online.
Read More

BROOKLYN (KINGS COUNTY) “OLD TOWN” RECORDS

Welcome to the single stupidest lawsuit we've ever had to file against a
government agency
Litigation in progress! Case filed October 15, 2018.
Read More

INDEX TO NEW YORK CITY MARRIAGE LICENSES, 1996-2017

Wait, you mean we’re gonna have to sue the same city agency again? Over the same
records set? After they lost to us last time?
Litigation successful! All records online
Read More

THE CONNECTICUT GENEALOGY INDEX

More than 5.5 million genealogical records to search through...except for the
ones the state still has locked up in an ancient FoxPro database they claim they
can't use
Records release mostly negotiated! But many still locked up in the state's
archaic database system All received records online.
Read More

BILLIONS OF DIGITAL IMAGES AND ASSOCIATED TEXT METADATA CREATED THROUGH THE
UNITED STATES NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION’S DIGITIZATION
PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM

We want it all back.
FOIA request filed with NARA on October 14, 2020
Read More

INDEX TO NEW YORK CITY MARRIAGE LICENSES, 1908-1929

What do you do when a city archive won’t share its records with the public?
Fight back. Read about our pilot project that started it all.
Litigation successful! All records online.
Read More

INDEX TO NEW YORK STATE BIRTHS (OUTSIDE OF NEW YORK CITY), 1881-1942

Finally, New York researchers can ditch the microfiche sheets and join the
twenty-first century.
No litigation needed! All records online.
Read More

LECTURES AND PRESENTATIONS

UPCOMING TALKS

August 1: Lecture at the annual IAJGS Conference in Cleveland, OH
August 22-23: Two presentations at the annual Federation of Genealogical
Societies (FGS) conference in Washington, DC
September 12: Lecture at the Contra Costa County Genealogical Society in Concord
(San Francisco Bay Area), CA
September 19: Lecture at the annual Association of Professional Genealogists
(APG) Professional Management Conference in Salt Lake City, UT
October 2: Lecture via videoconference to JGS of Cleveland, Beachwood, OH
October 19: Lecture at the Irish Family History Forum in Bethpage (Long Island),
NY

RECENT TALKS

2019: Recorded lecture with live Q&A at Capital Region JGS (Albany, NY); Online
Lecture for Legacy FamilyTree Webinars; hosted the bimonthly #genchat; San Ramon
Valley Genealogy Society (Danville, CA);
2018: JGS of Washington State (Bellevue, WA); Mt. Diablo Genealogical Society
(Walnut Creek, CA); Fairfax Genealogical Society (Vienna, VA); JGS of Maryland
(Baltimore, MD); National Genealogical Society annual conference (Grand Rapids,
MI)
2017: Live-Streamed Lecture at the 2017 IAJGS conference (Orlando, FL); Santa
Clara County Historical and Genealogical Society; San Luis Obispo County
Genealogy Society; Oakland FamilySearch Library with the San Francisco Bay Area
JGS; JGS of Cleveland (Beachwood, OH, via videoconference)
2016: JGS of Long Island (Plainview, NY); The Center For Jewish History (New
York, NY); Lecture at the 2016 IAJGS conference (Seattle, WA); San Francisco Bay
Area JGS (San Francisco, CA)

See more of our presentations, slides, videos, and webinars

"INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM FIGHTERS"

...ACCORDING TO THE OFFICE FOR INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM OF THE AMERICAN LIBRARY
ASSOCIATION

> Nothing gets under the skin of government bureaucracy or large-scale genealogy
> corporations quite like Reclaim the Records, a group of
> genealogists-turned-activists who file Freedom of Information and Open Data
> requests to make government records published… Their dedication and endurance
> in filing lawsuits and cutting through red tape benefits us all. Moreover,
> their jocular tone is not only refreshing, it’s much more readable for
> non-expert audiences. Most researchers in genealogy are not professionals;
> they are simply the curious family members, the designated relatives for
> keeping the family history. Reclaim the Records is the hero we deserve, and
> the one we need.

Read the ALA’s full article about our work

AWARDS AND RECOGNITION

FGS DIRECTOR'S AWARD

WINNER of the Federation of Genealogical Societies 2017 Director’s Award,
presented in recognition of both exceptional contributions to the field of
genealogy and family history, and extra-mile efforts to promote good will and
improve services.

IAJGS OUTSTANDING PROJECT OF THE YEAR

WINNER of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies 2017
award for Best Project for our work bringing genealogical and archival records
back to the public.

EFF FOILIES AWARD

WINNER of a 2017 Electronic Frontier Foundation Foilies Award for our records
requests and subsequent lawsuit against the Missouri Department of Health and
Senior Services, recognized as exposing one of “the year’s worst in government
transparency.”

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS AND EDITORS (IRE/NICAR) - GOLDEN PADLOCK AWARD FINALIST

Our open records work and ongoing lawsuit in Missouri led to the state’s
Department of Health being named a FINALIST for the 2017 Golden Padlock Award,
which is given annually at the IRE/NICAR banquet to “the most secretive
government agency or individual in the United States.” This satiric award
usually honors the work of television and newspaper investigative teams in
uncovering government corruption; we were the first archives-related
organization to be recognized.

JOHN STEDMAN MEMORIAL GRANT RECIPIENT

TWO-TIME WINNER of the annual $3,000 grant for genealogical records projects
that provide access to new sources. 2018: Grant awarded for our upcoming FOIL
request and likely lawsuit for the New York City birth and death index; 2017:
Grant awarded for our ongoing lawsuit for the Missouri birth and death index.

Do you know about records that ought to be available to the public, but aren’t?
Take our Records Survey and tell us about them!

GET THE LATEST NEWS! SIGN UP FOR OUR FREE E-MAIL NEWSLETTER

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(We ask because some states' Freedom of Information laws only allow state
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Leave this field empty if you're human:

CATCH UP ON YOUR READING

11/25/2023 - MILLIONS of Maryland genealogy records (and full certificates! 🤩)
now online, FREE!
09/30/2023 - A MILLION new birth and death index records for Missouri, now
online and FREE
08/16/2023 - Millions of new Connecticut genealogy records, online and
searchable and FREE!
03/11/2023 - USCIS keeps confusing your great-grandpa's records for their
piggybank, so we're suing them yet again -- and you can help!
11/30/2021 - A gift 🎁 for YOU for Giving Tuesday: 1.76 million NEW JERSEY
birth index records! Never before online! FREE!
05/18/2021 - Time-sensitive: tell USCIS about your experiences with their
Genealogy Program!
03/20/2021 - UPDATE on the legal fight for ~1.6 million digitized NYC death
certificates from 1949-1968
10/30/2020 - Every single historical New York City vital record, finally online
for FREE?! 😍
10/14/2020 - BIGGEST. FOIA. EVER. Reclaim The Records takes on the US National
Archives, for billions (yes, BILLIONS) of historical records
10/03/2020 - 🚨 NEW RECORDS ONLINE! 🚨 Introducing the Missouri Birth Index and
the Missouri Death Index!

@ReclaimTheRecs on Twitter
Retweet on Twitter Reclaim The Records Retweeted
Free Law Project ⚖ 🦋 @freelawproject ·

Our new search engine makes it possible to search millions of PACER filings for
emojis. 🤷

Twitter 1760796049642602791
Reclaim The Records @reclaimtherecs ·

Last night, we were sitting in bed with our laptop, browsing PACER for
recently-filed FOIA cases, as one does, and we found a *very* interesting one.

Someone FOIA'ed NARA (@USNatArchives) for a copy of the Zapruder film. 😳

It is indeed a public record, held by NARA. BUT.
1/

Twitter 1761132606253609309
Retweet on Twitter Reclaim The Records Retweeted
Ben Schmidt / @benmschmidt@sigmoid.social @benmschmidt ·

I too have found @USNatArchives to be unacceptable at processing FOIA requests
-- I filed the basic request below two separate times in 2022 (through NARA and
through http://foiaonline.gov), never heard anything back: just went to check on
it and learned foiaonline is dead!!

Twitter 1761052425845109093
Retweet on Twitter Reclaim The Records Retweeted
Amye Bensenhaver @amyebensenhaver ·

"Govt officials are custodians of public records, not owners. Since records are
integral to their operation, managing records is as fundamental to the duties of
every agency as is filling potholes, writing tickets, making sure teachers get
paid."

Twitter 1760700190577590306
Retweet on Twitter Reclaim The Records Retweeted
Washington Coalition for Open Government @washingtoncog ·

Washington's 50-year-old Public Records Act is at risk after years of erosion by
exemptions, tech workarounds & misuse. We're rallying the people to assert our
#righttoknow! See WashCOG's report on the state of the PRA at & join the fight.
#shinethelight

Twitter 1760719997037596680
Reclaim The Records @reclaimtherecs ·

Just filed a Memorandum of Law in one of our several ongoing but not yet
publicly announced #FOIA lawsuits against a federal agency for genealogical
records. 🥳

Hint: it is indeed a US government agency, and yet this song is thematically
appropriate:

Twitter 1759783189248151681
Retweet on Twitter Reclaim The Records Retweeted
Adoptee Rights Law @adopteelaw ·

In adopteeland, you're apparently not an adult until you are 40 years old.
#adopteetwitter

Twitter 1757392472378933536
Reclaim The Records @reclaimtherecs ·

👀
https://twitter.com/denys_allen/status/1757532789614768486

Twitter 1757871741853127050
Retweet on Twitter Reclaim The Records Retweeted
American Oversight @weareoversight ·

NEW: A proposed bill would effectively gut the Kentucky Open Records Act, which
was enacted to recognize that “free and open examination of public records is in
the public interest.” The legislature has chipped away at this vital law in
recent years.

Twitter 1757804623480410582
Retweet on Twitter Reclaim The Records Retweeted
Tara Hammes @tarahammes ·

Let’s add another 90 days to the count, shall we @HealthNYGov? See you next
month for 1,000 days waiting . . . @ReclaimTheRecs

Twitter 1756449529405002231
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Reclaim the Records

2 months ago

📰 EXTRA, EXTRA! 📰Hi again from your genealogically-minded open data pals at
Reclaim The Records! This is a quick end-of-the-year social media post to let
you know that some of our recent (and future) work has been featured in the news
this month,
… See MoreSee Less

Reclaim the Records

2 months ago

Reclaim The Records’ work with our intrepid intern Michael W. McCormick, to
acquire millions of Maryland birth, marriage, death, and naturalization records
from the Maryland State Archives and put them online for free public use (most
of them now ou
… See MoreSee Less

Reclaim the Records

3 months ago

🤩 IT’S THE MARYLAND MOTHERLODE! 🤩Hi. Please excuse the all-caps, but we’re
currently hyped up on a sugar high from the pumpkin pie, and a records-high from
OVER A HUNDRED YEARS OF NEW AND TOTALLY FREE GENEALOGY RECORDS THAT WE JUST PUT
ONLINE and
… See MoreSee Less

Reclaim The Records is an IRS-recognized 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Our
EIN is 81-4985446. Contact us at info@reclaimtherecords.org

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