I’ve been thinking…
…Memorial Day
With Memorial Day in the United States coming up, I’ve been thinking about the members of my family who’ve served in the various branches of the military. Did you know we can find records for these patriotic individuals?
Fold3 is one of the best‑known websites for military records. It’s a subscription service, though they do offer a free membership with limited access. From time to time—often around military observances or recognition days—they open selected premium collections to the general public for a short period.
So much of the research we routinely do in on the larger genealogy sites. While on Ancestry, I found this notice on my home page:
Clicking on this resulted in a list of military hints for people in my family tree. Most of them that I viewed were images of draft records, which have so much useful information in them. One of the hints took me to Find-A-Grave where someone had posted an obituary that I’d never seen! You just never know.
Finding military records at FamilySearch may require a little more work. Sometimes, they will have a quick link to a collection on the home page. However, if you go to the Search page and scroll down, you’ll see this:
When you click on ‘BROWSE ALL COLLECTIONS,” you will be taken to the entire list. There, type in ‘military’ in the search box, or select the ‘Military’ filter from the right-hand column. This will provide you a list of all military-related collections at FamilySearch.
There is a lot of wonderful information in the various military records. I hope this helps you find some of it. Happy Searching!
One response
Memorial can be meaningful in so many ways to each of us. Many members of my family throughout the generations have served in the military. However, to my knowledge, the only one who died during service was my third-great-grandfather, John Topping. He was a private in a Wisconsin unit during the Civil War. I am proud to be his descendant and grateful beyond words for his sacrifice.