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 Friday, December 05, 2008
Footnote Releases Web's Biggest WWII Collection
Posted by Diane
Subscription historical records site Footnote has posted the Web's largest collection of WWII records just in time for Pearl Harbor Day (Dec. 7)—and they’re free for a limited time. Footnote CEO Russ Wilding and National Archives programs director James Hastings made the official announcement this morning at a Washington, DC, press conference. The collection offers four main components: - An interactive version of the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii (it's similar to Footnote’s free, interactive Vietnam Wall memorial) showing servicemembers who died during the attack on Pearl Harbor. You can search for a name and link to its image on the memorial, as well as get details about the person’s service. Or you can manuever across a giant image of the memorial.
- WWII Hero Pages—similar to the free, Social Security Death Index-based Footnote Pages released earlier this year—which lets you create an online tribute for your WWII ancestor with photos, timelines and stories. More than 8.8 million pages have already been created.
- WWII photos, consisting of more than 80,000 digitized images from the National Archives that haven’t been online until now. You can browse by topic or search captions that highlight the people, places and events in the images.
- WWII documents include submarine air patrol reports, missing crew reports, news clippings, Pearl Harbor muster rolls, JAG files and more.
Note the collection doesn’t include WWII military service records. These records, stored at the National Archives’ National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, are restricted for privacy reasons. A servicemember—or if he’s deceased, his next-of-kin—can request his file. See the center’s Web site for more information. No specifics on how long the collection will stay free, though I’d hazard a guess that the USS Arizona Memorial and Hero Pages will be permanently free. PS: I just learned that is the case, and the photos also will remain free. The document collection will be free for all of December.
Footnote | Military records
12/5/2008 11:11:51 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00) 
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Thursday, November 06, 2008
Remembering Canadian Veterans, Re-Watching The War
Posted by Diane
We’re coming up on Veterans Day (in the United States) and Remembrance Day (in Canada), and our contributing editor Rick Crume told me about a neat remembrance of the 68,000 Canadians killed in World War I. Nights through Nov. 11, those names will be projected onto the National War Memorial in Ottawa and buildings elsewhere Canada, and onto the side of Canada House in London's Trafalgar Square. At the 1918 Vigil site, you can search for names of Canadians killed in the Great War to learn the person’s service number, rank, regiment, death date and the when the name will be displayed. Also marking Veterans Day, many PBS stations are re-airing Ken Burns’ WWII documentary The War. It had me riveted to the sofa last year when it first aired. Click here to search for broadcasts on your PBS station. You can get more veterans’ stories on the Veterans History Project's special Web site Experiencing War. (I got a chance to talk with Ken Burns recently, and I’ll share some of the conversation in a later post.) For more on military records, see the Genealogy Insider military records category and the FamilyTreeMagazine.com online toolkit.
Canadian roots | Military records | Social History
11/6/2008 8:18:09 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Thursday, October 16, 2008
Footnote Releases First Civil War Pensions
Posted by Diane
Historical records subscription site Footnote released its first digitized Civil War Widows’ Pension files today. Footnote’s collection has 5,257 record images so far. They’re part of a pilot project, announced about a year ago, to work with the National Archives and Records Administration (which holds the original pension records) and FamilySearch to digitize 3,150 pension files of Civil War widows. FamilySearch and Footnote plan to digitize all 1,280,000 pensions in the series. Pension records were never microfilmed, so until now, your only option to get your ancestor's pension was to travel to NARA in Washington, DC, hire a local researcher, or order copies for $75 or more. The digitized records are part of Footnote’s $69.95 annual subscription. You can view the records free at Family History Centers and at NARA facilities. A Civil War pension index is free on the FamilySearch Record Search pilot site. 
FamilySearch | Footnote | Military records
10/16/2008 9:04:35 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Thursday, September 25, 2008
101 Best Web Sites: Military History and Records Portal
Posted by Diane
Peruse this week’s highlights from our 101 Best Web Sites for family history: - eHistory: We put this free Ohio State University site in our military research category for rich records of conflicts—including the The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. (the OR), battle overviews, Miller's Photographic History of the Civil War, maps and timelines.
- Access Genealogy: Besides oodles of links, this free portal also serves up census, vital, immigration, cemetery and military records; plus biographies and such Native American essentials as the 1880 Cherokee census and the Final Rolls of the Five Civilized Tribes (aka the Dawes Rolls).
You can search by surname, or go to United States Genealogy to browse databases by title.
See the rest of our 2008 101 Best Web Sites picks on FamilyTreeMagazine.com.
Genealogy Web Sites | Military records
9/25/2008 2:15:42 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Wednesday, August 13, 2008
NARA to Release Records on WWII Intelligence Officers
Posted by Diane
On Aug. 14, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) will open more than 35,000 personnel files of men and women who served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the country’s intelligence agency during World War II. The files, located at NARA’s College Park. Md., facility, cover civilian and military OSS personnel who died while in service or were transferred, discharged or reassigned prior to 1947. Records document applications, training and work assignments, pay, leave and travel, evaluations, basic medical information, awards and decorations, and discharges. Some files have special citations for combat actions or major intelligence missions. The files are arranged by name, so you can use NARA’s Archival Research Catalog to search for people with OSS files. It’s a little tricky—here’s how I did it: 1. In the Archival Research Catalog, make sure the Archival Description tab is selected (it should be the default).
2. Type 1593270 (the OSS ARC identifier) into the search field and click Search.
3. Click the link for the single result.
4. Scroll down and click the Search Within This Series icon to search for a name (the search may take awhile). Or, to browse names, click the link “15,169 file units described in ARC.”
You don’t get much identifying information, just the person’s name and serial number, which you can use it to order copies from NARA. Fun fact: Julia Child (then Julia McWilliams) served in the OSS, where she helped develop repellant so sharks wouldn’t foil US efforts to blow up German U-boats. She also met her her future husband, Paul Child, another OSS member. See NARA’s Web site for more background information on OSS records.
Libraries and Archives | Military records
8/13/2008 10:33:58 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Thursday, August 07, 2008
Free Database of the Week: Virginia WWI Veterans Surveys
Posted by Diane
In 1919, as part of an effort to preserve the stories of Virginians in the Great War, a governor-appointed Historical Commission sent questionnaires to the state's returning WWI soldiers and nurses. A full narrative of the completed questionnaires was never published, and the records ended up with the Library of Virginia. Now they’re in a database of more than 14,900 records, one for each respondent, linked to digitized images of each questionnaire page plus any accompanying photographs or other material. The completed questionnaires hold a wealth of data, including names, dates, places, educational and religious background, and military service details. Soldiers also answered questions about their wartime experiences and how war affected their personal values. See the library Web site for more on this collection. You can search on a keyword (such as a name or hometown) or phrase, or enter a word to browse alphabetically adjacent records. Search results come in table form; click the number on the far left to bring up the catalog entry. Next, click the URL next to the document icon, then click the link to a page of the questionnaire.
Free Databases | Libraries and Archives | Military records
8/7/2008 4:40:18 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Thursday, July 03, 2008 Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Civil War Research and Events Updates
Posted by Diane
A few Civil War research and history news items to start your day: - The Western Maryland Regional Library has put the Antietam National Cemetery payroll for 1866-1867 online. The digitized and transcribed book bears names and wages of laborers who built the wall around the cemetery. You can browse or search (the search is in the upper right; choose the payroll database from the pulldown menu).
Entry is via the CWPT’s Flickr site. The deadline is Aug. 31, with prizes in four categories ranging from certificates of recognition to free Civil War conference registrations.
- This year marks the 145th anniversary of the Battle of Gettyburg, and more than 10,000 participants will stage a battle re-enactment July 4-6. Tickets range from $24 per adult for a day to $57 for three days, with lower prices for kids. Get ‘em at the Gettyburg Re-enactment Web site.
Celebrating your heritage | Military records | Social History
6/24/2008 9:55:23 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Free Military Records 'Til May 31 Mark Ancestry.com-NARA Agreement
Posted by Diane
To celebrate the signing of a five-year digitization agreement with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), The Generations Network (TGN) will make Ancestry.com’s military records collection free May 20 through May 31. (Normally, you'd need an Ancestry.com subscription at $155.50 per year.) Some notable records in that collection include the Civil War pension index, Revolutionary War and War of 1812 bounty land warrants, and WWI and WWII draft registration cards. Now for the new agreement: NARA and TGN already have been collaborating to digitize records, but now TGN staff and equipment will be on-site at NARA to speed up the process. TGN will index the records and make them available to Ancestry.com
subscribers; access will be free in all NARA research facilities. TGN
also will give NARA copies of the record images and indexes. Digitizing will start with Immigration and Naturalization Service passenger and crew arrival and departure lists (1897 to 1958) and death notices of US citizens abroad (1835 to 1974). Neither record set has been available outside NARA research rooms. In the future, look for immigration, birth, marriage, death and military records. NARA also has non-exclusive digitization partnerships with other organizations, such as FamilySearch and subscription historical records site Footnote. You can see details of those partnerships on NARA's Web site.
Genealogy Web Sites | Libraries and Archives | Military records
5/20/2008 11:22:16 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Wednesday, March 26, 2008
See Vietnam Wall Names Free on Footnote
Posted by Diane
Footnote’s latest addition lets you search—free—for those whose names are etched into the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. The site has added an interactive exhibit with a database of names linked to photos of each engraved name. The images are from a 460-foot photograph of the wall, consisting of 6,301 separate images “stitched” together.  The Wall bears 58,320 names of armed forces members who died or went missing while serving in the Vietnam War. (Names may be added on Memorial Day each year as the Department of Veterans Affairs receives additional information.) You can search for a name or browse by a category, such as branch of service and hometown. You'll see a photo of each matching name. Click a match for details, including the person's hometown, rank, specialty (such as maintenance or field artillery), decorations, religion, marital status, birth date and death date and cause. You also can click View on the exhibit's main page to see the entire stitched-together photo—then zoom in and move around. (As you might expect, the image takes a l-o-o-o-o-ng time to load.) Hover over a name, and a window pops up you can click for details on that person.  The black granite Vietnam Veterans Memorial was constructed in 1982 after its creator, 21-year-old architecture student Maya Ying Lin, won a competition to design it. A few years ago, I was one of its 3 million annual visitors. I most remember the solemn quiet—in contrast to the atmosphere around other memorials on the National Mall—and the sound of pencil scratchings as visitors made rubbings of names. Most of Footnote's digitized historical records are available with a subscription or on a pay-per-view basis, but the virtual Wall exhibit is among the site's free offerings. Update: Click Comments, below, for additional tips on searching the database and viewing the Wall.
Genealogy Web Sites | Military records
3/26/2008 4:43:25 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Blog Readers Await WWI Soldier's Letters
Posted by Diane
A British war blog is getting a lot of attention lately. What’s unusual is that it’s from World War I—in a way. On WWI: Experiences of an English Soldier, blogger Bill Lamin is posting letters his grandfather William Henry "Harry" Bonser Lamin wrote from the trenches in France, Italy and elsewhere in Europe during World War I. Each letter appears 90 years to the day after it's dated. Readers don’t know whether a letter is Harry’s last, just as Harry’s family—sisters Kate and Annie; brother, Jack; wife, Ethel; son Willie; and niece, Connie (whom Harry and Ethel cared for)—didn’t know. The letters, which Lamin found in his parents’ home, are filled with battle descriptions, complaints about tight quarters and spare rations, thanks for parcels from home, and requests for more missives from family. Harry dated this letter July 14, 1917: I’m in good health but we have had a rough time this last week or two going on working parties at night digging trenches and one thing and another. One night we were between our lines and the Germans but we all came out alright. It’s a bit rough but it might be worse. Lamin supplements the letters with photos, updates from genealogical research on the family, and details from the battalion’s official war diary, which you also can read in a separate blog. ( Learn more about British battalion and unit war diaries here.) If you want to find out more about an American WWI soldier, see the WWI research guide in the November 2007 Family Tree Magazine and use the WWI resource toolkit on FamilyTreeMagazine.com.
Genealogy Web Sites | Military records | Social History
1/9/2008 8:35:44 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Friday, November 09, 2007
High School Posts and Preserves WWII Letters
Posted by Diane
Over on the FamilyTreeMagazine.com Forum, mdrogers posted a message about a project at Clover Hill High School in Midlothian, Va., to collect WWII letters, photos and diaries. The Research and Technology class transcribes the letters, archivally preserves them, and posts the text online at It Took a War. Each letter is accompanied by a little background about the writer. You also can view photos from the front and read or watch interviews with service members. “My father was a very patriotic man,” says Rose Young, an Army nurse who was at the Battle of the Bulge. “My brother enlisted in service first, and [my father] was proud to have a son, but how many men had a daughter that went away? So he puffed his chest all the time about the fact that he had a daughter in service.” What a great way for students to learn about history and research, and what a great site for you to peruse.
Genealogy Web Sites | Military records
11/9/2007 4:43:27 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Thursday, October 25, 2007
Find WWII Ancestors in Just-Opened Records
Posted by Diane
It just got easier to find information on your ancestor who served in World War II. This week, the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) opened Official Military Personnel Files (OMPFs) of Army, Army Air Corps, Army Air Forces, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard personnel who were discharged, retired or died in the service prior to 1946. That’s more than six million records documenting assignments, evaluations, awards and decorations, training, demographics, medical information and disciplinary actions. Some files also contain photos of the individual and official correspondence. You can access your relative’s records by visiting or writing the NPRC in St. Louis, submitting Standard Form 180, or (if you're next of kin) using eVetRecs online ordering. See the NPRC announcement for more details. The NPRC, a National Archives facility, holds service records of military personnel discharged after 1917. It plans to eventually open its entire collection 57 million OMPFs, with more available to the public each year through 2067.
Libraries and Archives | Military records
10/25/2007 8:43:10 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Civil War Widows' Pension Files to be Digitized
Posted by Diane
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and FamilySearch have announced a partnership to digitize case files of approved pension applications from widows of Civil War Union soldiers. The agreement will kick off with a pilot project to digitize, index and provide access to 3,150 pension files. When that’s done, FamilySearch, along with records site Footnote.com, plans to digitize and index all 1,280,000 pensions in the series. Oh, happy day! That’s a huge step toward easing genealogists’ research and restoring their good will toward NARA, which recently doubled pension file ordering fees to $75. Pensions aren’t microfilmed, so paying the fee, visiting NARA in Washington, DC, or hiring an on-site researcher are currently your only options. Widows' pension application files often include supporting documents such as affidavits, witnesses’ depositions, marriage certificates, birth records, death certificates, and pages from family Bibles. According to the announcement, the digitized records will be free at Family History Centers, with an index free on the FamilySearch Web site. Images also may be available for a fee on a commercial site. The digitized pension records also will be free at NARA facilities, and NARA will get gratis copies of the record images and associated indexes. This is part of a broader partnership announced today, in which FamilySearch staff will camp out at NARA five days a week with high-speed digitization cameras. Ultimately, it'll mean you have ready access, through FamilySearch and Family History Centers, to court, military, land, and other government records dating as early as 1754.
FamilySearch | Footnote | Genealogy Industry | Military records
10/23/2007 12:20:43 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Thursday, October 04, 2007
Hear WWII Stories from Veterans History Project
Posted by Diane
The Library of Congress, which houses the Veterans History Project (VHP), has created Experiencing the War, a companion Web site to the PBS series The War. That series, created by Ken Burns, tells the story of World War II through footage, photos and recollections of people who lived it. ( It’s had me glued to the television for the past two weeks.)  The interviews cataloged on Experiencing the War don’t appear in The War, but they’ll add to what you see on TV. The site groups WWII vets’ interviews to correspond to the series’ seven episodes. You get a photo and vital stats for each veteran, then you can watch the whole interview or selected clips. If you're more of a page turner than a clicker, WWII stories from the VHP also appear in the new Library of Congress World War II Companion by Margaret E Wagner, Linda Barrett Osborne and Susan Reyburn (Simon & Schuster, $45), along with narrative, photos, maps and charts. See the VHP Web site to browse stories from other wars back to World War I. You also can get information on participating in the VHP by contributing your own wartime experiences, interviewing a veteran or donating war-related letters and journals.
Genealogy Web Sites | Military records | Social History
10/4/2007 4:15:12 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Wednesday, September 26, 2007
New Grand Army of the Republic Records Resource
Posted by Diane
If you read the July 2007 Family Tree Magazine article on Civil War ancestors, you know Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) records are a promising resource—some 40 percent of Union veterans joined their local GAR posts. But you also know the GAR wasn’t a centralized organization, and post records are dispersed among state archives and historical societies (sometimes with microfilmed copies at the Family History Library), with sporadic indexes. GAR help is here: Missouri historian Dennis Northcott is compiling a book series transcribing information from GAR death rolls. The three books he’s published so far include name, military unit and rank, death date, and post information for 90,000 GAR members in several Midwestern states: Illinois; Indiana; and Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska. (Note if your ancestor moved, he would've joined a post in his new state, not the state from which he served.) Now Northcott's working on Ohio and Pennsylvania. He's posted all the names from the series on his Web site. If you think you've found your ancestor, you can order the book ($30) or look for it at your library. Armed with the GAR post location and information from the bibliographies in Northcott’s books, you can start your search for GAR rosters, meeting minutes and other records. For more research resources, see our online Civil War genealogy roundup.
Family Tree Magazine articles | Genealogy Web Sites | Military records
9/26/2007 1:02:48 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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