Ancestry.com for Kansans
The Kansas State Archives partners with Ancestry.com to make records available online. Ancestry has digitized the state records listed below, and is also digitizing the Kansas newpapers for its Newspapers.com website. Kansas residents can use these records for free by following this link and using their driver’s license or state ID card to login.
Verify your Kansas driver's license
You will need to create a free Ancestry account after you login, but no payment information should be required. Since we do not save the driver's license data, you will need to re-enter it each time you want to use the databases. Please direct any questions to KSHS.reference@ks.gov. NOTE: Full access to the library edition of Ancestry, and Newspapers.com, is available in the Historical Society's State Archives research room.
Records currently available
free to Kansas residents who log-in through this portal:- Kansas State Census Records (1865-1925—taken every 10 years for years ending in "5")
- Kansas Territorial Census Records (1855, 1856, 1857, 1858, 1859)
- Population Schedules: Counties, 1953-1978 and Cities, 1919-1961
- Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Prior Service Records Index, 1859-1935
- Kansas Naturalization Abstracts, 1864-1972
- Kansas Vital Records Abstracts, 1854-1989
- Russell County, Kansas, Newspaper and Vital Records Index, 1869-1949 (J. C. Ruppenthal Collection)
- Kansas town and city directories up to 1963
Military Records:
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Civil War
- Enlistment Papers of Kansas Volunteer Regiments, 1862, 1863, 1868
- Veterans Enrollment, 1889 (Union veterans living in Kansas)
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Grand Army of the Republic (Civil War Union Veterans)
- Annual Post Reports, 1880-1940
- Bound Post Records, 1866-1931
- United Spanish War Veterans Death Records (TAPS), 1898-ca. 1975
- Fort Riley Hospital Muster Rolls, 1855-1902
- United Spanish-American War Veterans, Reports of Deaths, 1945-1970 (TAPS)
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World War I
- Camp Funston Military Records, 1914-1919
- Veterans Enrollment, 1930 (veterans living in Kansas)
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Kansas Veterans, 1917-1919, Manuscript Collection no. 49
Information on Kansas soldiers in World War I, primarily members of the 35th and 89th Divisions. Items solicited from each veteran or his family included letters, especially from overseas; a photograph; and a brief biography containing date and place of birth, residence, parents' names, occupation, and names of spouse and children. The amount of information in each file varies.
Ancestry has also ingested these databases from the KSHS web site:
Coming later:
WWI Enlistment and Discharge Records, 1917-1919