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Location Closure The Forest Park, Washington Village, Herring Run, Brooklyn, & Northwood branches are closed for renovations. Learn more here.

Holiday Closing All Pratt Library locations will be closed early Wednesday, November 27 at 5 pm, and closed Thursday, November 28 in observance of Thanksgiving Day.

Historical Census Data

HeritageQuest

HeritageQuest Online, a ProQuest resource, contains essential collections of genealogical and historical sources with coverage dating back to the 1700s.

Now powered by Ancestry, HeritageQuest Online offers the following:

  • U.S. Federal Censuses feature the original images of every extant federal census in the United States, from 1790 through 1940, with every-name indexes for all years.
  • Genealogy and local history books and directories deliver more than 40,000 family histories, local histories, city directories, and other books.
  • Revolutionary War records containing original images from pension and bounty land warrant application files help to identify more than 80,000 American Army, Navy, and Marine officers and enlisted men from the Revolutionary War era.
  • Freedman’s Bank Records, with more than 480,000 names of bank applicants, their dependents, and heirs from 1865–1874, and full-page register views. It offers valuable data that can provide important clues to tracing African American ancestors prior to and immediately after the U.S. Civil War. It is considered one of the most important resources for African-American genealogical research.
  • U.S. Serial Set records the memorials, petitions, private relief actions made to the U.S. Congress back to 1789, with a total of more than 480,000 pages of information.

Accessible in all Pratt Library locations, or from home with your library card.