We can get certified copies of certain documents from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington D.C.
A certified document is a paper document which NARA attests to be a true copy of an original that is in their collection. It is accompanied by NARA’s seal of authenticity and bound with a red ribbon.
Certified documents are sometimes required in court cases or for other legal purposes. They are NOT appropriate for most genealogy researchers.
The most common certified documents are census pages and passenger manifests.
We can also get certified copies of naturalization paperwork IF those papers were filed in Washington DC. If they were filed anywhere else, then you’ll need to them from the closest NARA branch office. (But note that the New York City branch has closed and those records are now in the Philadelphia branch). You might be able to find an independent researcher that works at that facility on THIS page.
For a certified copy of any other kind of document, please contact us first.
Our fee is $65 (which includes the fee charged by NARA) per certified document plus actual shipping. Multiple documents can be shipped together, of course, with a single shipping charge.
We typically ship within a week of your order.
For the “Soldier’s or citizen’s name” fields on the order form, use your own name or the name of the person who is the subject of the document.
You MUST include these things in the Comment field:
- the URLs to each of the documents on Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org,
or Archives.gov (do not just attach copies). Those are the only sites
from which NARA is willing to certify that they are authentic originals. - your shipping address
