Arkansas Genealogy

USA (1,403,636) > Arkansas (28,181)

By Record Type

Arkansas Genealogy Research Guide

If you're not sure which records would be helpful, you can try our Ancestor Source Finder tool.

By County

By City

Arkansas Genealogy Research Guide

Quick Facts

Arkansas entered the Union on June 15, 1836, as the twenty-fifth state, with its capital at Little Rock. The land was part of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, fell within Missouri Territory, and became Arkansas Territory in 1819 before statehood. Because Arkansas is a federal public-land state, the story of who first owned the ground runs through the federal government as well as the counties — a distinction that shapes nearly every kind of record search here.

• Capital: Little Rock. Arkansas Post served as the first territorial capital until the seat of government moved to Little Rock in 1821.
• Statehood: June 15, 1836, the twenty-fifth state, formed from Arkansas Territory (organized 1819).
• Counties: 75. Arkansas County, the first, was created December 13, 1813; the last, Cleveland County, was created in 1873 as Dorsey County and renamed in 1885.
• Land type: Arkansas is a federal (public-domain) state, so original title passed from the United States through the General Land Office. Federal land patents therefore exist for Arkansas — searchable free at the Bureau of Land Management — while later transfers are recorded as county deeds, as explained in the Land Records section.
• Nickname and motto: the Natural State (earlier, the Land of Opportunity); the state motto is Regnat Populus (“The People Rule”).
• Where records live: most genealogical records — deeds, probate, marriages, and naturalizations — are kept at the county level by the county clerk and the circuit clerk/recorder, with statewide vital records held by the state from 1914.

Libraries and Archives

Arkansas’s principal collections cluster in Little Rock, home to the state archives, the Central Arkansas Library System, and the state health and land agencies; regional archives, the university at Fayetteville, and county courthouses and libraries hold material for their own areas. The leading repositories include:

• Arkansas State Archives (Little Rock) — created in 1905 as the Arkansas History Commission; the official state archives, holding territorial, state, and county records, Confederate pension files, tax and land records, newspapers, and microfilm for all seventy-five counties. Its Northeast Arkansas Regional Archives (Powhatan) and Southwest Arkansas Regional Archives (Washington) serve those regions.
• Arkansas State Library — Arkansas imprints, newspapers, periodicals, and reference collections.
• CALS Roberts Library & Butler Center for Arkansas Studies — the special-collections branch of the Central Arkansas Library System, with manuscripts, photographs, and Arkansas family and local history.
• University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections (Fayetteville) — manuscripts, maps, and the largest Arkansas research collection, with much of it online.
• Sequoyah National Research Center (University of Arkansas at Little Rock) — the leading repository for Native American materials, including sources on the removals through Arkansas.
• National Archives at Fort Worth — federal census, court, naturalization, military, and land records for Arkansas.
• The FamilySearch Library and its worldwide FamilySearch Centers hold extensive Arkansas microfilm and digital collections, and county clerks and circuit clerks, county historians, and local historical societies hold records for their own areas.
• Arkansas Genealogical Society — the statewide society, publisher of The Arkansas Family Historian.

Major Websites

These sites host digitized Arkansas records and indexes. Subscription sites are marked ($).

• FamilySearch — free; the backbone finding aid, with the Arkansas Research Wiki, catalog, and large digitized collections of vital, land, probate, court, and church records.
• Ancestry ($) — extensive Arkansas vital, census, land, military, naturalization, and probate collections.
• MyHeritage ($) — Arkansas vital records, censuses, and other collections.
• Findmypast ($) — Arkansas marriage and other record sets.
• Fold3 ($) — military records, including Civil War service files.
• Arkansas Digital Archives — free; thousands of digitized records from the Arkansas State Archives, including county, death, land, and military records.
• Chronicling America — free; the Library of Congress newspaper archive, including many Arkansas titles.
• Internet Archive and HathiTrust — free; digitized Arkansas county histories, record abstracts, and law books.
• Find a Grave and BillionGraves — free; cemetery listings, photographs, and transcriptions.
• Encyclopedia of Arkansas — free; authoritative articles on the state’s counties, history, land, and events.

Law and Government

Arkansas’s statutes and legislative records help explain the jurisdictions and record-keeping practices that produced genealogical records, and the foundational volumes are digitized and free to read.

• The territorial laws, the early revised statutes (the Revised Statutes of 1837 and their successors), and the annual session laws (the Acts of Arkansas) are digitized on the Internet Archive and HathiTrust.
• The registration laws that created the modern vital records — statewide birth and death registration from 1914, marriage registration from 1917, and divorce registration from 1923 — are the key legal dividing lines for those records.
• The Encyclopedia of Arkansas surveys the territorial and state governments, the successive constitutions of 1836, 1861, 1864, 1868, and 1874, and the courts, useful for learning which body created which records.
• The Arkansas State Archives holds the state’s legislative records — the Acts of Arkansas, the House and Senate journals, and the journals of the constitutional conventions from 1819 onward.

Vital Records (Birth, Marriage, Death)

Statewide civil registration of births and deaths began February 1, 1914, but compliance was far from complete for roughly three decades, so many earlier events were never recorded at the state level. A limited number of Little Rock and Fort Smith birth and death records survive from 1881. Marriages were recorded by the county clerk from the founding of each county, with statewide marriage registration from January 1917 and divorce registration from January 1923.

The Arkansas Department of Health holds the statewide birth, marriage, death, and divorce records, and the Arkansas State Archives holds older records and county microfilm; genealogical copies are available under time limits and eligibility rules, with a fee. Use these online indexes to identify a record, then order the certificate:

• Deaths (statewide, from 1914): Arkansas Death Index, 1914–1950 — free on FamilySearch; also on Ancestry ($), with images in Arkansas Death Certificates, 1914–1969 ($). Earlier deaths appear in the free Arkansas Deaths and Burials, 1882–1929; 1945–1963 and in Arkansas Deaths on MyHeritage ($).
• Marriages (county, from statehood): Arkansas County Marriages, 1837–1957 — free index and images on FamilySearch; also on Ancestry ($). Post-1917 state copies appear in Arkansas Marriage Certificates, 1917–1972 ($). Order earlier records from the county clerk.
• Births (statewide, from 1914): Arkansas Birth Certificates, 1914–1925 ($); the free Arkansas Births and Christenings, 1812–1965 on FamilySearch indexes scattered earlier baptisms. Births less than 100 years old are restricted.
• Divorces (statewide, from 1923): the free Arkansas Divorce Index, 1923–1939 on FamilySearch, with certified copies from the circuit or chancery clerk or the Department of Health.

History and Timeline of Major Events

Key dates that shaped Arkansas’s jurisdictions and records:

• 1541 — Hernando de Soto’s expedition passes through the region.
• 1686 — Henri de Tonti founds Arkansas Post near the Quapaw villages, the first European settlement in the lower Mississippi Valley.
• 1803 — The region becomes United States territory through the Louisiana Purchase.
• 1812–1819 — Arkansas lies within Missouri Territory.
• 1815 — The initial point of the Fifth Principal Meridian is established on November 10 in eastern Arkansas, beginning the federal survey of the Louisiana Purchase lands.
• 1819 — Arkansas Territory is organized, with its capital at Arkansas Post.
• 1821 — The territorial capital moves to Little Rock.
• 1836 — Arkansas is admitted as the twenty-fifth state on June 15.
• 1861 — Arkansas secedes in May and joins the Confederacy.
• 1862 — The Battles of Pea Ridge (March) and Prairie Grove (December) are fought.
• 1863 — Union forces occupy Little Rock in September.
• 1865–1874 — Reconstruction; the Freedmen’s Bureau operates across the state.
• 1873 — A wave of new counties is created, among them Dorsey (later Cleveland), the last county.
• 1875–1896 — The federal court at Fort Smith, under Judge Isaac Parker, exercises jurisdiction over the Indian Territory to the west.
• Late 1800s–early 1900s — Numerous county courthouses burn, destroying deeds, marriages, and probate records; together with Civil War losses, these fires make many Arkansas counties “burned counties.”

Census Records and Substitutes

Federal censuses survive for Arkansas from 1830 through 1950; the territory also appears in the 1820 and 1830 federal censuses, and the schedules are complete except for 1890, which was almost entirely destroyed. They are free on FamilySearch and are also searchable on Ancestry ($) and MyHeritage ($).

Territorial and state censuses add coverage between and before the federal years. What each records varies:

• 1823: a territorial sheriff’s census; only the Arkansas County schedule is known to survive.
• 1825 and 1827: sheriff’s censuses taken but not known to survive.
• 1829: a territorial sheriff’s census; fragments survive for about a dozen counties, listing heads of household.
• 1865: a partial Arkansas state census.
• 1911: a state census of surviving Confederate veterans, giving unit and service details.

Substitutes. The Arkansas Compiled Census and Census Substitutes Index, 1819–1860 ($) draws together the 1819–1829 and 1830–1839 tax lists, the surviving sheriff’s censuses, and the federal indexes through 1870. A special 1890 schedule of Union veterans and widows partly fills the gap left by the destroyed 1890 census. Where censuses are missing, tax lists, city directories, and voter registrations are the best substitutes for placing a family in a given year.

Church Records

Because civil registration is late, church records are the most important substitute for vital records before 1914. The largest denominations are Baptist — especially Southern Baptist — and Methodist, followed by Presbyterian, the Churches of Christ and Disciples of Christ, and the Roman Catholic church, strongest around Arkansas Post and in German and Irish settlements. Baptism, marriage, and burial registers often reach back decades before the state began recording births and deaths.

• Arkansas Church Marriages, 1860–1976 — a free index and images of selected church marriage registers on FamilySearch.
• Denominational and congregational registers survive unevenly: many originals remain with the local church or its regional denominational archive, while transcripts and microfilm are held by the CALS Roberts Library and University of Arkansas Special Collections. Catholic baptism, marriage, and burial registers are kept by the parish and the Diocese of Little Rock, and a growing number of Arkansas congregational registers are on FamilySearch microfilm, searchable in the catalog by county and town.

Court Records

Arkansas courts created records that reach well beyond lawsuits into estates, guardianships, naturalizations, and land. The main courts a researcher encounters are:

• Circuit Court — the principal trial court in each county, hearing major civil and criminal cases and, before 1906, many naturalizations; the circuit clerk also records deeds.
• County Court and Probate Court — county administration and, historically, the probate of wills and estates and the appointment of guardians (see Probate Records).
• Chancery Court — equity matters, including divorce and, in many counties, probate.
• Territorial Superior Court (1819–1836) — the territory’s high court, whose records are at the State Archives.
• The federal U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas at Fort Smith — under Judge Isaac Parker, the “Hanging Judge,” it held jurisdiction over the Indian Territory from 1875 to 1896; its case files are documented by the National Archives.

Because many county courthouses burned, surviving court records are often incomplete; look for State Archives copies, published abstracts, and neighboring-county records.

Ethnic/Minority Records

Arkansas has been home to many peoples, and knowing where a group settled points to the records most likely to document a family.

• African Americans. A large enslaved population lived in Arkansas before the Civil War, concentrated in the plantation counties of the Delta. Freedmen’s Bureau and Freedman’s Bank records document the Reconstruction years and are free on FamilySearch and held at the National Archives, and the CALS Roberts Library holds Arkansas slavery and Black-history collections.
• Native peoples. The Quapaw, Caddo, and Osage were indigenous to Arkansas; the Trail of Tears brought the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminole through the state on their removal to the Indian Territory just west. The Sequoyah National Research Center is the leading repository.
• Germans and Swiss. Settled around Stuttgart in Arkansas County and in Catholic farming communities; Catholic parish registers are key sources.
• Italians. In 1898 Italian families led by Father Pietro Bandini left the Sunnyside plantation in Chicot County and founded Tontitown in Washington County, named for Henri de Tonti; their church and community records document these families.

Immigration and Naturalization

Arkansas grew mainly through inland migration from other Southern states rather than as a port of entry, carried by the Mississippi, Arkansas, and White rivers and later the railroads. Immigrants who did settle were naturalized in the county circuit courts or, later, the federal district courts.

• Arkansas Naturalization Records, 1907–1968 ($) — declarations, petitions, and certificate stubs from the federal district courts, held by the National Archives at Fort Worth.
• County circuit-court naturalizations for many counties, reaching back into the nineteenth century, are free on FamilySearch; a naturalization case typically leaves a declaration of intention (first papers) and a later petition (final papers), which may sit in separate volumes or even different courts, so check both the circuit clerk’s records and the federal district courts for the same person.

Before September 1906 any court of record could naturalize, so declarations and petitions are scattered among the counties; after 1906 the records are more uniform and are held with the federal courts.

Land Records

As a federal public-land state, Arkansas’s first titles were issued by the United States, not the state, so the General Land Office (GLO) patents are federal records — search them free at the BLM General Land Office Records site. Arkansas land is described by the rectangular survey system anchored by the Fifth Principal Meridian, whose initial point was established in eastern Arkansas in 1815 (now Louisiana Purchase State Park); the meridian and its base line govern surveys in Arkansas and several states to the north. Later transfers between individuals are recorded as deeds by the county circuit clerk/recorder.

Where the records are kept.

• Federal patents (first title): searchable free at BLM GLO Records; the underlying land-entry case files are at the National Archives, and the tract books and survey plats are on FamilySearch.
• County level: deeds and mortgages are recorded by the circuit clerk/recorder in each county.
• Arkansas State Archives: territorial and early state land records, with digitized state land records on the Arkansas Digital Archives.

Large tracts and special grants.

• Spanish and French colonial grants: small grants made around Arkansas Post before 1803 were confirmed by the United States after the Louisiana Purchase.
• War of 1812 Military Bounty District: under the Act of May 6, 1812, a two-million-acre tract between the Arkansas and St. Francis rivers in eastern Arkansas was set aside as bounty land for War of 1812 veterans. Much of it was low and flood-prone, and many warrants were sold rather than settled, so the veteran named in a warrant is often not the eventual settler.
• Swamp Land and railroad grants: the Swamp Land Act of 1850 and later railroad land grants transferred large acreages to the state and to railroads for resale, generating their own settlement records.

Online, search BLM GLO Records for patents (free); Arkansas Homestead and Cash Entry Patents, Pre-1908 ($) abstracts the pre-1908 federal patents; and FamilySearch Full-Text Search makes many unindexed deeds and patents searchable by every name they contain, including grantors, grantees, and witnesses.

Military Records

Arkansas took part in every American conflict from the territorial militia forward, though courthouse fires and the Civil War destroyed some early rolls.

• Territorial militia and War of 1812: service is documented in federal rolls on FamilySearch and Fold3; the War of 1812 also left the bounty-land tract described under Land Records.
• Mexican-American War: Arkansas raised volunteer regiments; service records are on FamilySearch and Ancestry.
• Civil War: Arkansas furnished both Confederate and Union troops, including United States Colored Troops raised in the state. Service records are on FamilySearch and Fold3; the state’s Confederate pension files are the key state source — Arkansas Confederate Pension Records, 1891–1935 ($), with the underlying pensions free on FamilySearch — and the 1911 state census enumerated surviving Confederate veterans.
• Spanish-American War and World War I: the Arkansas State Archives holds muster-roll and service-record abstracts, and World War I service and discharge records are on the Arkansas Digital Archives; discharge records have been filed with county clerks since the early 1900s.

Probate Records

Probate — wills, administrations of intestate estates, and guardianships of minors — is among the richest sources for family relationships. In Arkansas it has been handled at the county level: the county and probate courts, and in many counties the chancery court, exercised probate jurisdiction, and the clerk holds the estate file — petition, will or administration, bond, and inventory — which usually names the heirs.

• Arkansas Probate Records, 1817–1979 — free images on FamilySearch, browsable by county.
• Arkansas Wills and Probate Records, 1818–1998 ($) — name-searchable across many counties.
• FamilySearch Full-Text Search makes many unindexed wills and estate files searchable by every name they contain.

As with other county records, probate files were lost in some courthouse fires; check State Archives copies and published abstracts where a county’s records are incomplete.

Tax Records

Tax lists place a family in a specific county and year and are valuable substitutes where censuses or deeds are missing; several consecutive years can reveal when a young man came of age, moved, or died and left heirs.

• The Arkansas State Archives holds extensive county personal-property and real-estate tax rolls, many of them on FamilySearch microfilm; the territorial and early tax lists of 1819–1839 are indexed within the compiled census-substitute index noted above.
• U.S. IRS tax assessment lists for 1862–1874 — Civil War–era federal income, license, and luxury taxes — cover Arkansas and are on FamilySearch and Ancestry ($).
• County treasurers and county clerks hold later assessment rolls.