Saturday, May 24, 2014

Memorial Day

It is Memorial Day weekend. Be sure to take advantage of Ancestry's offer of free military lookups! You can find it here: http://www.ancestry.com/cs/us/memorialday2014.

You will need to sign in to Ancestry to view the records but you can do this with a free account. Enter your search parameters. As always, start with a more wide search. Put more details in if you get too many results.



In my case, searching for Leo Miller, I had to enter his birth year to narrow down the results. In addition, on the left-hand side of the screen, you'll see a list of the military collections that are part of this free offer.
 


If you have a particular type of record that interests you, click the link for that type of record. In my case, I selected U.S. World War I Draft Registration Cards 1917-1918.  World War II Draft Registration Cards 1942 are also very popular, as is the Civil War Pension Index. There are a few more available if you click the "See More..." link at the bottom. In my experience, the Muster Rolls have a limited use. If I knew that I had found my ancestor's name in the Muster Rolls, I'd definitely save a copy but given that all they have is the person's name and possibly the reason for being on any given list, they won't provide much information that is helpful to figure out future research possibilities.

After clicking on the U.S. World War I Draft Registration Cards 1917-1918 link, it narrowed down my search quite a bit.




Click the "View Record" link on the left or the magnifying glass icon on the right to see the record. Don't forget to save a copy for your personal genealogical record collection!

Here is my grandfather, Leo H. Miller's World War I draft registration card.

--Matt

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