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• Wondering whom to thank for your Monday off work? Historians disagree on who should
  get credit for Labor Day. Most think it’s either Peter J. McGuire, general secretary
  of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation
  of Labor, or Matthew Maguire, a machinist, secretary of Local 344 of the International
  Association of Machinists in Paterson, NJ, and secretary of the Central Labor Union
  in New York. Read
  more Labor Day history on the US Department of Labor website.

• The National Archives in Kansas City has opened
  to the public 300,000 Alien Case Files (A-Files) for individuals born in 1909
  and earlier. This is part of the group of immigration records transferred last year
  from the US Citizenship and Immigration services to the National Archives. The files
  themselves date from 1944 and later, but the records remain closed until 100 years
  after the birthdate of the subject of the file.

The files aren’t online; you can search NARA’s
Archival Research Catalog for your ancestor’s name to see if there’s a file on
your ancestor (after clicking a name in the search results, click Scope and Content
for a few more details about the subject of the record). You can access the records
in person or order
copies from NARA.

• Members of the RootsWeb Allegheny County, Penn, Mailing List have posted online Allegheny
  County Vital Statistic Indexes compiled from Pittsburgh newspapers.
  

Just choose an alphabetical range and you’ll be linked to an index page
listing the vital events within that range. You can use your web browser’s Find function
to look for a name. Once you’ve found the name, publication and date, click the Quick
Links to Newspapers link to find the image of the page with the information you need.