Military Records

Submitted by Host GFS Laurie

If you have an ancestor who served in the Civil War, the below site offers photographs available from the US Military History Institute which can be ordered by snail or e-mail. A quick search of your ancestor's name will reveal any possible photo's available.

http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usamhi/PhotoDB.html

Now available, FREE DAR PATRIOT LOOKUP SERVICE. Do you think you have a Revolutionary patriot (male or female) in your family tree? The DAR will search their database of proven Revolutionary patriots free of charge. This service is available at http://www.dar.org/cgi-bin/natsociety/pi_lookup.cfm

The Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) was a patriotic society, founded in 1866, composed of Civil War veterans who had honorably served in the Union Army. This society was dissolved in 1956, with the death of its last surviving member.

Since the G.A.R. was a private veterans organization, not a part of the Federal Government, its archives are not among the records in NARA custody. NARA suggests you write directly to:

Grand Army of the Republic Civil War Museum and Library

4278 Griscom Street

Philadelphia, PA 19124-3954

Please check out this GREAT web site on G.A.R. Research:

http://suvcw.org/research.htm

More than 24 million men (male citizens and alien declarants) between the ages of eighteen and forty-five (approximately 23 percent of the population in 1918) were registered in three distinct World War I drafts. Not all men who registered for the draft actually served in the military, and not all men who served in the military registered for the draft. Those who did register for the draft included males born between 1873 and 1900 as follows:

1. 5 June 1917: all men aged twenty-one to thirty-one.

2. 5 June 1918: all men who had become twenty-one years of age since the previous registration. (A supplemental registration, dated 24 August 1918, covered all men who had become twenty-one years of age after 5 June.)

3. 12 September 1918: all men aged eighteen to twenty-one and thirty-one to forty-five.

I am using Ohio as an example (but these records are available for all states including Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia), these draft registration forms are available at your local FHC on microfilm. The title of the film series for Ohio is called "Ohio, World War I Selective Service System draft registration cards, 1917-1918." There are 239 reels for the state of Ohio. You must know the surname and county of residence of the person you are searching for.

You can locate the exact film number you need a head of time by going to the Family History Library Catalog at:

http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Library/FHLC/frameset_fhlc.asp

Then you can order the film from your local FHC.

Information on the World War I cards may include name; age; home address; date and place of birth; occupation; by whom employed; where employed; marital status; race; height, build, color of eyes and hair; prior military service; whether a natural-born citizen, naturalized citizen, alien, or foreign citizen who had declared intention to seek US citizenship (aliens were required to list the country to which they were subject); whether disabled; whether bald; whether the male was solely responsible for the support of a father, mother, wife, child under twelve, or sister or brother under twelve; and whether an exemption from the draft was being claimed (and, if so, on what grounds). They contain no information about an individual's military service.

The records are first arranged alphabetically by state, including Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. Within the states, the cards are alphabetical by county or city (except for Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, which are alphabetical by names of registrants). Then they are "roughly" arranged alphabetically by surname. Occasionally while filming, lost cards would be found. If these cards were found, they would be filmed AFTER the Z's of the locality they belonged to.

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