Records from the Railroad Retirement Board are now available at the National Archives, Southeast Region/Atlanta in Morrow.
The board was founded in 1936 and its records include applications that provide a retiree's career history, date and place of birth, parents, spouse and children. These records represent railroad retirees from all over the U.S., not just the Southeast, and were brought to Morrow from the Chicago headquarters of the board.
To have a file pulled for research, you must supply the person's full name, date of birth and, if possible, Social Security number.
The records date from the 1930s through the 1960s. Sensitive information on any living person is redacted.
Having had copies made years ago from the board's headquarters, and then looking recently at the actual file at the National Archives, I was amazed at the amount of information available.
I found clues on a great-uncle that could lead to other facts about his life. His file included his World War I discharge, death certificate, and a chronology of his life on the railroad, both in New York and in Georgia. Other family members appeared as witnesses on some documents.
For more information, go to www.archives.gov/southeast and then search for "railroad." You can read more about the board and its records at www.rrb.gov, clicking on the genealogy link.
The National Archives in Morrow is open 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. 770-968-2100.
Central State Hospital records
The records of Central State Hospital, the state mental hospital founded in 1842, can be useful in genealogical research. The oldest records are available at the Georgia Archives on microfilm, and are abstracted for 1842-1870 in "The Georgia Black Book, Vols. I and II" by Robert S. Davis Jr. If a patient has been deceased 75 years or more, the information can be released from records still kept at the hospital near Milledgeville. Go to www.centralstatehospital.org, "resources" and "genealogy." The website also has information on whether someone is buried on the hospital grounds.
Census terminology
Be careful when using census records, because an occupation can be unclear or misleading. For example, a person called an "inmate" when living in the household of someone not related to them should not be taken as meaning they were in prison. And a "hooker" in the official census definition meant someone working in a cotton or wool factory. It's best to consult a dictionary or check online for earlier meanings that now may be obsolete.
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