Record Atlas
Sebastian County · Arkansas · United States of America · 2 volumes · 1877–1977

Fort Smith

Fort Smith in United States of America, also written Fort Smith, Sebastian, Arkansas, United States. 2 record volumes covering 1877–1977, and who holds them.

Last changed 2026-09-27 · first mapped 2026-09-23 Follow what changes.

Comes out as a sheet for the reading room — what to ask for, who holds it, and every link written out in full.

This place

Where to begin

You know your family came from Fort Smith. Here is the order I would work in, cheapest and easiest first — and what to do when that runs out.

  1. Search both names, not one

    This place has been written down as Fort Smith, Fort Smith, Sebastian, Arkansas, United States. A catalogue indexed under the old name will not answer to the new one, and most people never find out they were searching the wrong word.

    Do this: search each name separately on every site below. Write the list down; you will need it every time.

  2. Start here — Images, free, but you must make an account first

  3. When you run out — and you will

    Everything above is what this atlas knows. It is not everything there is. Nine places in ten on this map have never been surveyed by anybody, so a gap here is usually our silence rather than the record's absence.

    Do this: write to the archive named in the era table for your year, even if we hold nothing for it. Then tell us what you found — a gap somebody has personally closed is the most useful thing a stranger can give this map.

Also written

Fort Smith, Sebastian, Arkansas, United States

If the document in your hand says one of these, this is the place it means.

Whose archive this ground was

Not yet mapped. The record regions cover Istria, the Kvarner, Carnia and Dalmatia so far, and Fort Smith is outside them. That is a gap in this map rather than a gap in the record — and the most useful thing anyone could fill in.

The volumes

Grouped by what it costs to look, most open first — which is the order worth trying them in.

Images, free, account needed — 2

The ground worth walking

Within 25 km — 4 places. These neighbours hold 1 catalogued volume between them.

A register belongs to a parish, not to a village. A hamlet with no church of its own was written into the book of the church it walked to — and that book is catalogued under the other place's name. This is the ground to search before concluding a record does not exist.

Neighbours with volumes catalogued
Also within 25 km, nothing catalogued

Moffett · Buell · Jenson

Correctly placed and unread. A gap here is this atlas's silence, not the record's — the registers may well exist and nobody has walked them.

11 volumes catalogued here

The level below «a collection covers this place»: which book, for which years, and the link that opens its images. From FamilySearch's own catalogue. Nobody here has opened any of them. You can, though — mark the pages you have searched on any row below and this browser will remember where you stopped.

Other — 11

National sources for United States of America, unverified

From Wikidata, CC0 — the national archive and the national library where the country has one. Nobody here has opened these. The link answered when it was asked and that is the whole of what this map knows about them. They are listed because a country with no named source at all is the worse answer: 199 of the 237 countries here had nothing but the worldwide services, which cover everywhere and therefore say nothing about anywhere.

The sources for United States of America

National and regional sources that cover this ground whether or not anybody has walked it here — which makes them the answer, not the consolation, for a place with no volumes recorded on it.

  • National Archives Catalog (NARA) Images, free, no account Washington, D.C., United States
    The US National Archives catalogue and scans — naturalisations, passenger lists, military service, land.
  • Chronicling America Images, free, no account Washington, D.C., United States
    The Library of Congress's digitised American newspapers, full-text and free.
  • Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation Images, free, account needed New York, United States
    Passenger arrivals at New York, 1820–1957, with manifest images. Free with an account.
  • Findmypast Images, behind a paywall
    Commercial. The strongest British and Irish collection, including parish registers licensed from diocesan archives and the 1921 census of England and Wales. BT 27 IS NOT ONE FORM AND ITS COLUMNS ARE NOT A CONSTANT. The outward passenger lists were re-drawn across the series, so a field present in one piece proves nothing about another and the era has to be checked before a row is planned around it. Sampled by the Luwinski archive: the 1907 form has NO «last address in the United Kingdom» column at all and buckets ages by nationality instead; the 1937 and 1939 form — printed «P.M. 21», columns (1)–(9) — carries last UK address at (6), country of last permanent residence at (8) and country of intended future permanent residence at (9); a 1951 piece is a typed US military transport manifest filed inside BT 27 with none of the Board of Trade form left. ACROSS EVERY REVISION SEEN, none gives an address in the DESTINATION country — the finest is a country and nothing below it, so «where in Australia did they settle» is not a question this series answers.

Sources that cover everywhere

Not about United States of America in particular — these reach most of the world, which includes here. They are listed after the local sources because a body that holds this ground's own paper is a better first stop than one that holds a little of everywhere's. Worth knowing they exist all the same.

  • Internet Archive Images, free, no account
    Full-text search across millions of digitised books, including parish histories, nobiliaries and local monographs that name ordinary people.
  • Arolsen Archives Images, free, no account
    The former International Tracing Service. Concentration camp, forced labour and displaced-persons records for some seventeen and a half million people, free and fully indexed.
  • BillionGraves Images, free, no account
    GPS-tagged headstone photographs. Smaller than Find a Grave but its coordinates are per-stone, which Find a Grave's often are not.
  • Find a Grave Images, free, no account
    Volunteer-photographed headstones and cemetery indexes, worldwide, with very uneven coverage. Owned by Ancestry but free to read.
  • WikiTree Images, free, no account
    A free, single shared tree with an unusually strong sourcing culture. Not a record source.
  • Yad Vashem — Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names Images, free, no account
    Names and testimony pages for victims of the Shoah, free.
  • FamilySearch Images, free, account needed
    The largest free collection of record images and indexes in the world. A free account is required, and a minority of images are restricted to Family History Centres and affiliate libraries.
  • Geni Images, free, account needed
    One shared world tree. Useful for finding other researchers on the same line; not a record source, and its assertions are only as good as their citations.
  • JewishGen Images, free, account needed
    The central Jewish genealogy resource — town-level KehilaLinks, burial and Holocaust databases, and revision lists for eastern Europe.
  • Geneanet Partly free, partly paid
    Member-contributed trees and transcriptions, strongest in France. Much is free; a Premium tier gates some search and images.
  • Ancestry Images, behind a paywall
    The largest commercial collection. Strong on the English-speaking world, censuses and immigration; weak on continental parish registers.
  • MyHeritage Images, behind a paywall
    Commercial, with a large tree network and good European newspaper and directory coverage. Search is free; opening a record is not.

FamilySearch collections that reach here

A collection is a claim over an area, not a book standing in this town — so these are ranked by how specifically they reach Fort Smith. A free account is needed to open the images, and some are restricted to a Family History Centre.

Catalogued under Arkansas — 27

Wider than the county, narrower than the country, and filed under the unit this place belongs to.

…and 2 more.

Elsewhere in the same country — 33

Narrower than the country but catalogued under some other district. Listed because a collection's title is not always where its records end, and never because it covers this ground.

…and 8 more.

See Fort Smith on the map →

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