This week on 60 Minutes, Norah O’Donnell takes a trip through America’s past by going inside its archives. Functioning like the country’s safety deposit box, the National Archives stores the priceless original records that made America what it is, including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

But beyond the founding documents students read about in history books, the National Archives also preserves less well-known artifacts that tell the story of America — and all its citizens. 

Among the more than two billion documents that are stored at Archives headquarters in Washington, D.C., 60 Minutes saw petitions from two famous American women who played prominent roles in the Civil War. As the documents show, the women later beseeched the U.S. government to pay them what they felt they were owed.

One petition is from Mary Todd Lincoln, the wife of President Abraham Lincoln and the first widow of an assassinated president. In 1869, she wrote to then-Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax to explain that she should receive a pension from the federal government, just as Civil War soldiers’ widows were given one. Up to this point, no former first lady had ever received a pension. 

The following year, Congress passed an act granting her a $3,000 a year pension and establishing a precedent for widowed future first ladies to receive an annual payment from the federal government, regardless of whether their husband died while in office. Presidential widows today are granted $20,000 annually, based on a 1958 federal law. 

A second Civil War-era petition 60 Minutes saw had been filed by Harriet Tubman. An abolitionist who brought enslaved people through the underground railroad, Tubman acted as a nurse, a scout, and a spy for the Union Army. But more than two decades after the Civil War ended, she had to ask for help from the nation she had served.

In the petition Tubman filed with the federal pension office, she explained that she was destitute and, at 67 years old, still working odd jobs to support herself. She was, she said, in debt for everyday essentials like groceries and coal. 

Prominent American women in the Archives 

Her request was for an increase in the meager pension she had begun receiving after her husband died. Because her husband, Nelson Davis, had served in the Civil War, Tubman was eligible to receive a widow’s pension. Now she was asking to be compensated for the work she had done in service to the country during the Civil War herself.  

After further petitions to Congress, both from Tubman and other prominent Americans, Congress in 1899 passed a bill upping her pension to $20 a month in consideration of her service as a nurse during the war. 

Finding your family in the National Archives

But the pages in the National Archives do not just tell the stories of famous Americans; they also preserve the records of everyday citizens. Within the 13.5 billion paper documents, just about everyone can find records from their own family history.

In the microfilm reading room, Norah O’Donnell saw a name meaningful to her within the passenger lists of the S.S. California: her grandmother, Mary Monaghan, who immigrated from Belfast when she was 23 years old. A hem stitcher with just $20 in her pocket, Monaghan planned to visit an aunt in Jersey City — information that O’Donnell learned for the first time.  

Any American who wants to explore their own family’s history can use the National Archives. To start the research, go to archives.gov, which explains how to explore the different types of genealogy resources. Think of the ways your ancestors may have interacted with the federal government, like serving in the military, appearing in the census, or buying and selling land.

For the United States’ Archivist Colleen Shogan, making these documents accessible is a vital part of protecting the nation’s story — whether it’s a petition from a first lady, or just the first stop on an immigrant’s journey in America.

“It enables the public to learn about the history of the United States,” Shogan told 60 Minutes. “And that can be someone learning about their personal history, their local history, their community history. It can be someone that wants to learn about a particular era of American history or a particular president. We want to be accessible not only for professional researchers, which are very important to us, but also to the high school student.”

The video above was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and edited by Scott Rosann.