Footnote.com continues to add original historical record collections to the site. Adding thousands of records daily, Footnote.com is one of the largest collections of historical records found anywhere on the internet. The following collections are some of the new and updated collections that can be found on Footnote.com.

• Vietnam War Photos of the U.S. Army
• Texas Death Certificates
• City Directory of Minneapolis
• Homestead Records

Click here to view all the new and updated collections on Footnote.com.

Today Footnote.com announced a major addition to its Vietnam War Collection: Army Photos and Unit Service Awards. Now totaling over 100,000 photos and documents, this collection (in partnership with the National Archives) helps visitors gain better perspective and appreciation for this often misunderstood event in U.S. History.

“These documents and photos tell a part of the Vietnam War story that you just can’t find in textbooks,” explains Russell Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. “It’s imperative that we preserve and share this side of history for future generations. We are encouraging everyone to come to Footnote.com and enhance these stories by adding their own comments, photots and documents.”

Some of the original historical documents found in this collection include:

• Army Unit Service Awards – including Presidential Unit Citations, Valorous Unit Awards and Meritorious Unit Commendations
• Army Photos – feature various activities of the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War
• The Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial – featuring service records for each name on the wall
• Photos of the Marine Corps in Vietnam in color
• Photos of the Marine Corps in Vietnam in black and white

Footnote.com will continue to work with the National Archives to add more Vietnam War content online.

Footnote.com was named the Best Genealogy Organization of 2009 by Tamura Jones. His site reviewed many of the industries products and sites and Footnote.com was listed as the best organization.

The article states that “Footnote simply did what it should be doing; continue to enlarge and improve its collections. It introduced the interactive census of 1930, and later announced it will make all the US census available this way.

“Footnote also worked with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to make the Holocaust Collection available.”

You can continue reading the review on Tamura’s site.

Footnote.com was named #16 on the Best Applications for Tech-Savvy Teachers by Rasmussen College. Rasmussen College wrote the following about Footnote.com.

“Footnote is a history teacher’s dream app, with more than 60 million original historical documents to peruse through. Users of Footnote can use the site to view never-before-seen historic documents from renowned institutions like The National Archives and The Library of Congress.”

To view the entire list of Best Apps for Tech-Savvy Teachers, please click here.

In honor of Pearl Harbor Day, we are making the largest interactive WWII collection on the web free to the public during December. Featuring over 10 million records, documents and photos from the National Archives, this collection helps family members and historians better understand the people and events of WWII.

Included in this exclusive collection is the Interactive USS Arizona Memorial. This online version allows people to view the actual wall of names and search for those they know. An interactive box for each name on the wall features additional information about each veteran and includes a place where anyone can contribute photos and stories. View the Captain of the USS Arizona, Franklin Van Valkenburgh, on the interactive wall.

It’s estimated that a little over 2 million WWII veterans are still alive in the United States today. However, thousands of veterans are passing away every month taking with them many of the stories from WWII. Footnote.com is making an effort to help preserve these stories by digitizing documents from the National Archives and providing interactive tools to help people connect with each other.

Christina Knoedler from Pennsylvania used the Missing Air Crew Reports on Footnote.com to discover information about her father-in-law, who is a WWII veteran. “The other night, I showed him what I had found,” explains Christina. “He couldn’t believe that these papers existed. They had not only his name but also his buddies’ names. He started to reminisce and it was quite an evening. This will allow me to go back and document many more events in our family’s history for the generations to come.”

The Missing Air Crew Reports are just one of the record collections found on Footnote.com. Other WWII collections on Footnote.com include:

• Pearl Harbor Muster Rolls
• U.S. Air Force Photos
• Submarine Patrol Reports
• Japanese Air Target Analysis
• Army JAG Case Files
• Navy JAG Case Files
• Naval Press Clippings
• Allied Military Conferences
• Holocaust Records

“People are making fascinating discoveries in these records,” says Russell Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. “Reading some of the first-hand accounts helps you develop a different view and appreciation of our WWII heroes and what they went through.”

To experience the Interactive USS Arizona Memorial and the World War II visit www.footnote.com/wwii/.

The latest collection on Footnote.com is the Native American collection which was released yesterday. Working together with the National Archives and Allen County Library, Footnote.com has created a unique collection that will help people discover new details about Native American history. The Footnote Interactive Native American Collection features original historical documents including:

• Ratified Indian Treaties – dating back to 1722
• Indian Census Rolls – featuring personal information including age, place of residence and degree of Indian blood
• The Guion Miller Roll – perhaps the most important Cherokee genealogical research
• Dawes Packets – containing original applications for tribal enrollments
• And other documents relating to the Five Civilized Tribes

Footnote.com’s Native American Collection creates an interactive environment where members can search, annotate, and add comments to the original documents. Additionally, visitors can view pages for many of the Native American tribes that include historical events on a time line and map, a photo gallery, stories and comments added by the community.

Footnote.com also provides a free service where visitors can create their own web pages for their Native American family. “Native Americans have a rich oral history,” explains Russ Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. “We hope that the online community will use Footnote Pages to preserve these stories, which will help ensure that they do not become lost to future generations.”

We need to do some maintenance on Footnote tonight that requires us to take the site down for a little while.

Our plan is to start at 10 PM Mountain Time.  The maintenance should take about 3 hours and we’ll get the site back up as quickly as we can.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

We wanted to provide an update on our Holocaust Collection. Originally, we planned to have these records open to the public for only the month of October. However, due to the popularity of this collection, we have decided to keep the records open free to the public through the rest of this year. This will enable more people to search and explore the original records from the National Archives.

On January 1, 2010 these records will become part of the paid subscription on Footnote.com. These records, however, will remain free to access through any of the National Archives physical locations. You can access the Holocaust Collection from this page: http://go.footnote.com/holocaust_records/.

Today Footnote.com announced it will digitize and create a searchable database for all publicly available U.S. Federal Censuses, ranging from the first U.S. Census taken in 1790 to the most current public census from 1930. Through its partnership with the National Archives, Footnote.com will add more than 9.5 million images featuring over half a billion names to its extensive online record collection.

With over 60 million historical records already online, Footnote.com will use the U.S. Census records to tie content together, creating a pathway to discover additional records that previously have been difficult to find.

“We see the census as a highway leading back to the 18th century,” explains Russ Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. “This Census Highway provides off-ramps leading to additional records on the site such as naturalization records, historical newspapers, military records and more. Going forward, Footnote.com will continue to ad valuable and unique collections that will enhance the census collection.”

As more census decades are added to the site, visitors to Footnote.com can view the status for each decade and sign up for an email notification when more records are added to the site for a particular year.

View the Census Progress Page on Footnote.com.

In addition to making these records more accessible, Footnote.com is advancing the way people use the census by creating an interactive experience. Footnote members can enrich the census records by adding their own contributions. Users can:

• Add comments and insights about a person
• Upload and attach scanned photos or documents related to that person
• Generate a Footnote Page for any individual that features stories, a photo gallery, timeline and map
• Identify relatives found in the census by clicking the I’m Related button

“We will continue to move aggressively to add records to the site, specifically those that are requested by our members and others that are not otherwise available on the internet,” said Wilding.

The Interactive Census Project is now underway. Enjoy and interact with the project here.

Julian Noga was raised in the town of Skrzynka, Poland by his mother on her four-acre farm while his father was in the United States.  When Julian was 16 years, he left home and moved to Tarnow. In downtown Tarnow, he worked as a dishwasher at an elegant Jewish club.

When the Germans invaded Poland in September of 1939, Julian returned to his home town of Skrynka. He returned home to find that 27 of Skrzynka’s Jews were forced to dig their own graves and then shot. He hid a rifle in some nearby woods but was unable to use it before he was deported to Austria to do farm labor for a rich landowner near Linz.

Near Linz, he fell in love with Frieda, the land owner’s daughter. She loved him too. Her father objected, but the two continued to meet at night in secret. Nazi law forbade romance between Poles and Germans and the Gestapo warned Julian that if he ever saw Frieda again he would be hanged. He was assigned to another farm but continued to see Frieda. He was arrested and transferred to Flossenbürg. In Flossenbürg, Julian was sentenced to do backbreaking labor in a quarry.

Julian was liberated on April 23, 1945 and after the war he reunited with his love Frieda. You can remember Julian and share more of his stories on his Footnote page.