8.7 Military Records
In Ancestral Trails, Mark Herber writes, “Many family historians find that an ancestor who served in the armed forces or at sea is of special interest.… Ancestors who served in the armed forces may be difficult to find in the sources already described. A military ancestor may rarely appear at home in census returns. His marriages (and his children’s births) could have taken place anywhere.”1 If civil and census records are hard to identify, military records may be the answer. The big four have many collections of military documents and indexes to explore, but there is one website that stands out for making military information accessible. Fold3.com “provides convenient access to military records, including the stories, photos, and personal documents of the men and women who served.… From the beginning [in 1999], the… team developed a unique understanding of the value of creating an online repository for the world’s original source documents.”2 The website is now a subsidiary of Ancestry.com. Ancestry allows users to search for military records outside of Fold3 by selecting the “Search” menu and clicking “Military.” There are many military records on FamilySearch, but they are organized by place. Use the research Wiki to navigate to military records for a specific place or record type. If the name of the collection is known, find it under “Search” then “Records.”
Researchers benefit from military records. Draft cards may be the most searched for military records because, besides naming the individual, they include birthdates and places along with a physical description of the person. In most cases, the cards were filled out by the individual, so a draft card is an opportunity to obtain the research subject’s signature. It will also list residency and have a next of kin that might reveal a close family connection. There are usually addresses listed on the cards that can be used creatively in future research, and the record can be used as a source for the address and date by creating a “residency” fact on the family group record.
Utilize a snipping tool to create a graphic file of a record or the interesting visual parts of a document, like a signature.
Research strategies and applications for military records will be explored further in Chapter 11 but, if carefully picked through, a military record can lead to stories, maps, historical context, and information that brings the personal story of the research subject alive. Although not a definitive list, the following are types of records that historians may discover when searching for military records: awards, draft registration cards, medical records, veteran’s documents, home loans, education information, muster rolls, orders, service records, beneficiary’s data, declarations, wills, court martials, ID cards, certificates of eligibility, discharge paperwork, and more.
CHICAGO STYLE:
In quotes include the title of the collection, end quotations then name of person or people with the event and date followed by the place, italicized title of the website, author or sponsor of the website if known, accessed date with month spelled out followed by numerical day, year, url.3
“US, Korean War Era Draft Registration Cards, 1948-1959,” Daivs Sockpick draft registration on 17 January 1959 in Shishmaref, Nome, Alaska, United States Fold3, accessed February 4, 2025, https://www.fold3.com/image/725651802/sockpick-davis-page-1-us-korean-war-era-draft-registration-cards-1948-1959.
EVIDENCE EXPLAINED:
Name of collection in quotations, description of database, italicized repository/website (URL : standardized access date), description of document with person’s name, registration number or other identifying information, standardized place.4
“US, Korean War Era Draft Registration Cards, 1948-1959,” database with images, Fold3 (https://www.fold3.com/image/725651802/sockpick-davis-page-1-us-korean-war-era-draft-registration-cards-1948-1959 : accessed 4 February 2025), card for Davis Sockpick, serial number, draft board name, Shishmaref, Nome, Alaska. .
SENSIBLE CITATION:
The collection in quotation marks followed by the name of the individual with a description of the event on standardized date in standardized place, description of the database, identifying information about the record, italicized website, accessed on standardized date. The url should be embedded from the name of the person to the end of the standardized place.
“US, Korean War Era Draft Registration Cards, 1948-1959,” Davis Sockpick draft registration on 17 January 1959 in Shishmaref, Nome, Alaska, United States, online database with images, selective service number 51 5 40 47, Fold3, accessed 4 February 2025.