5 NARA Resources for WWI Research

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has many resources for you to research context for your WWI ancestors. Some of them are online.

  1. This is the place for you to begin researching NARA’s World War I Records. This page also includes links to the digitized versions of some of the most requested historical documents.

 

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  1. Read an article in NARA’s Prologue magazine about finding your WWI Army ancestors. They Answered the Call, Military Service in the United States Army During World War I, 1917-1919 by Mitchell Yockelson in Prologue Fall 1998, Vol. 30, No. 3.

 

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  1. If your ancestor was in The Spruce Production Division, gathering trees for building airplanes, you can learn more about it in GENEALOGY NOTES: THE ARMY in THE WOODS, Records Recount Work of World War I Soldiers In Harvesting Spruce Trees for Airplanes By Kathleen Crosman.

 

  1. Learn about how NARA is preserving movies about the Great War is discussed in Saving the Moving Images of World War I (Fall 2014) – The National Archives preservation staff is digitizing World War I motion pictures.

 

  1. Now that you know about NARA preserving the WWI films, you can check out the digitized films from World War I and World War II on YouTube

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