Category: Records

The initial source I’m using for constructing my list of consular posts and personnel is the Register of the Department of State. The Register was printed annually (sometimes more often) and listed the current employees of the Department of State posted in Washington and in the field. Additional contents varied over time, but one can often find information about where foreign governments maintained posts in the United States, brief biographical sketches of DOS personnel, legislation relating to the conduct of US foreign policy, and more.

Here’s the table of contents from the 1900 Register:

And here’s a sample page from the section in which US consuls are listed, also from 1900:

I’m still trying to get a definitive answer as to when the DOS Register began publication, but it was definitely published almost continually from 1869 until 1997, when it shifted to an online publication. As far as I have been able to discern, it wasn’t published in 1881, 1885, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1904, 1905, 1919, 1920, and 1921. (Apparently the Cleveland administration wasn’t too concerned about it? And I suspect the absence in the immediate aftermath of World War I is due to the US government’s failure to normalize its relations with the successor governments of the Central Powers.)

Many issues are available on the Hathi Trust or in Federal Depository Libraries. I have digital copies of the whole run from 1869 to 1942 and will consider requests to share.

For the missing years, I’m using the US Register, which began publication in 1816 after Congress passed a law demanding it. It’s a list of all US government employees. Initially, it was supposed to come out once every two years, but there were some irregularities, and then it became an annual. Many years have been digitized and made available online. (Sadly, at the time of this writing, the Google Books scan of the 1816 and 1818 editions are missing huge sections.) After the Civil War, there were often two volumes in a year, one for postal employees and one for everyone else. The US Register does list DOS personnel, but it focuses on those who drew salaries, so consular agents are not well represented, and all of the other cool stuff that’s in the DOS Register is missing.

In the early 1870s, staff at the Department of State in Washington created an index card system to keep track of where posts were located and who was in charge of them. Likely created as part of preparation for printing an historically oriented special edition of the Register of the Department of State for the department’s centennial, the original creator looked at departmental records to fill in historical data back to the earliest days of US foreign relations. The cards were maintained until 1969, and they are available on microfilm through 1939. They are organized by post and then by rank of personnel. As an example, here’s the first card for US consuls posted to Vienna, Austria:

If one typed up a list of all the places in the card headings, wouldn’t that provide a comprehensive list of posts? Sadly, no. In checking the cards against other records, I’ve found several dozen additional posts, although most of what I’ve found are consular agencies, rather than salaried posts. (The government kept good track of salaried posts!) The authors of the cards didn’t handle place name changes consistently, either. In some cases, when a post’s name changed — from Saint Petersburg to Leningrad, for example — the list was continued on the original card and a “see also” card was inserted for the new name. In other cases, they created a card for the new name and started a new list there. Sometimes they created new cards for minor spelling differences, too. In sum, there’s a lot of overlap.

I haven’t delved deeply enough into the cards to comment on whether the personnel data is accurate, but it’s certainly an extremely good place to start.

Here’s the citation for the microfilmed version of the consular cards:

US Department of State, List of U.S. Consular Officers, 1789-1939, National Archives Microfilm Publications: Microcopy no. 587, 21 vols. (Washington DC: National Archives and Records Service, 1964). OCLC Accession number: 7908593.

There are also cards for the diplomatic posts. Here’s the first card for the legation in Vienna:

Here’s the citation for the microfilmed version of the diplomatic cards:

US Department of State, List of U.S. Diplomatic Officers, 1789-1939, National Archives Microfilm Publications: Microcopy no. 586, 3 vols. (Washington DC: National Archives and Records Service, 1964). OCLC Accession number: 397282.

I have had the consular and diplomatic cards digitized and am willing to consider requests to share.

For more on the history of the DOS card file, see Smith’s America’s Diplomats and Consuls.

Department of State records pertaining to the US Consular Service records are in the Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State and Record Group 84: Records of the Foreign Service Posts. It’s important to keep in mind that not all consuls kept good records, and even if they did, many have been lost during wars, natural disasters, and similar catastrophes. There’s all sorts of great stuff in consular records, but it isn’t always as complete or as well organized as one might like.

Some of the consular records — along with some diplomatic corps records — covering the period from 1789 until 1906 have been microfilmed and are available at some research libraries, through Interlibrary Loan, or in the microfilm room of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) building in College Park, Maryland. They are organized by post, then chronologically. Here’s a PDF of the published finding guide:

NARA Diplomatic Records – Blue Microfilm Guide

Keep in mind that place names may have changed, so you’ll want to look under alternate names if you don’t find what you’re looking for on the first pass.

The period from 1906 to 1910 is the Numerical File, and it’s sort of a black hole. I’ll post more information about finding things there at some point in the future. Most of it has been microfilmed, though; the trick is figuring out where the documents you want actually are. They’re somewhere, pretty much randomly, in those ca. 1,500 rolls of film.

Then the Decimal File kicks in, covering the period from 1910 to 1929, gifting the researcher with a relatively nuanced filing system. The main finding guide, including country codes, is here:

NARA RG 59 Decimal File Guide

There are post codes for the consulates, too; my transcription from the list in the finding guide available in the textual records reading room at NARA is available here:

NARA RG 59 Consulate Numbers

Record Group 59 also includes a bunch of other great stuff that hasn’t been microfilmed and is held in College Park. It ranges from the early days of the department through roughly World War II. The finding guide is available in four parts:

NARA Inventory 15 Pt I – Guide to DOS Central Files

NARA Inventory 15 Pt II – Guide to DOS Central Files

NARA Inventory 15 Pt III – Guide to DOS Central Files

NARA Inventory 15 Pt IV – Guide to DOS Central Files

Then there’s Record Group 84. The Diplomatic Records guide mentioned above does have some information about the records here that have been filmed, but only a small number of the records fall into that category. The guide is also a bit misleading in that regard, giving the impression that the filmed records are all that exist. But there’s lots more at College Park! Most posts have some sort of records there, from account books to letter files to registers of American citizens. The basic finding guide is here:

NARA Guide to RG 84

If you go to College Park, you’ll use the information gleaned from these finding guides to consult the box lists to figure out what exactly you need to order. At this point, I don’t believe the box lists are accessible from anywhere but the textual records reading room at College Park.