I am very new to this so bear with me.

I have one family member (great-grandfather) for whom I am having trouble finding any information at all. On familysearch.org, I finally found record of him through the SSA. It says that his SSN was issued by the "Railroad board." Does anyone know what this means?

Thank you for any information you can give!

You can find basic information near the end of this page about SSNs (prefixes 700 through 728) issued to railroad workers through the Railroad Retirement Board:

http://rwguide.rootsweb.ancestry.com/lesson10.htm

This is very helpful! Thank you so much for taking the time to post it.

Here's more information about performing genealogy research on a person who was issued a SSN through the Railroad Board (my grandfather was one of those whose SSN was issued by this agency). This link is for the Railroad Board itself:

http://www.rrb.gov/mep/genealogy.asp

Also (and depending on your situation), here are places on the the SSA site regarding the SSN allocations:

http://www.ssa.gov/employer/stateweb.htm

Thanks so much!

My father worked for Baltimore and Ohio Railroad for 20+ years until his death in 1973. They were able to supply me with his pay records for all 20 years, even showing the two breaks in employment for military service and a bout with TB.

Great resource.