Military Documents: The Essential to Your Family Pine? from ElwynnZieme's blog

Were your ancestors conflict heroes? Think it or not, vital hints to your family's history might just be covering away in military archives - and locating them may be easier than you think. Even though you're not sure whether all of your ancestors ever offered in the military, it could spend to complete some digging. The payoff can be huge.

First some history by what you're searching for and why. Fires in 1800 and 1814 destroyed the records of the American Army and Navy servicemen which were used at the War Department. In 1894, an endeavor was made to revive these documents from numerous options via abstracts, and specific packages of records were created for each serviceman.

This packet of records was referred to as a Compiled Support History, and it contained information including rank, nara civil war records, military model, date of admission in to support, and launch, or death. In addition, it may possibly contain different information, such as era, host to beginning, and place of residence on enlistment.

Indices to Gathered Military Support Files

In the U.S., the found Created Military Company Documents to numerous wars can be found at the National Archives. They are the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, various Indian conflicts, and the Civil War. All the indices have already been microfilmed. Should you choose discover your ancestor's Compiled Service Record, it may show that you gain access to a lot of different data!

Like, if you learn that your ancestor offered in the Progressive Conflict, the pension file indices may show whether he or his heirs have a pension file. Should they did, you will have access to a lot of details about the family.

As you will see, if you're fortunate enough to locate your ancestors'pension documents, you'll obtain a precise image of what happened for them throughout their decades of company, so they are absolutely documents worth seeking.

But don't stop there - proceed and take to to get into the entire pension files. Why? Because when war masters and their widows requested pensions after different conflicts, like the Innovative War and the Civil War, they had to demonstrate the births, marriages and deaths of these quick family so they might have the funds. Usually, the only real evidence they'd of those activities were pages from household Bibles. Therefore the pages were ripped out and submitted. These pages will still be in the documents! Talk about uncovering an item of your family's record!