WWI Classification Lists Part 1: How to Order

Thanks to Classification Lists, I now know about events during several days in my grandfather’s life.

Why you might want this record: to learn more about the process between an ancestor’s registration for the draft and induction, which might include indication that an appeal or deferment was made.

What you need to know before ordering: the draftee’s name and local draft board identification number, which can be found on the WWI Draft Registration Card for your ancestor.

Groups of men who registered for the draft and were determined to be in the Classification I category (based on filling in a questionnaire), were called in for physical examinations.

Classification Lists show the results of the examination of the draftees, as well as where they were to be sent. These lists are found in NARA’s RG163, and as of this blog post being published, the Classification Lists at NARA are not online.

I searched FamilySearch.org for Joseph McMahon’s WWI Draft Registration Card at https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/collection/1968530

The identification code for Joseph McMahon’s local draft board is circled. This number is used by the NARA archivist to identify the book for the Classification List containing Joseph McMahon’s entry.

Courtesy of FamilySearch.org

I emailed this information with an attached image of his draft card to the NARA branch in Atlanta at: atlanta.archives@nara.gov

An automated response was sent to my email in reply. Shortly after that, a response from an archivist followed with confirmation that the record had been found, and how to pay for it. The cost was $20. The scanned record was emailed to me after the archivist confirmed the payment.

Human archivists are involved in the process of lookup, scanning, and communicating. That means the timeline for responses may vary based on archivists’ workload. Also know that payment must be verified before the record is emailed.

In the next blog post, we will take a look at the Classification List itself.

Special thanks to Peggy Ash and Michael Strauss for their informative, detailed, and motivating presentations about the US Drafts.

Book Review: The Complete Guide to Lineage Societies

The first thing that intrigued me about this book was how such a thin tome was titled “complete.” It is a thin book that packs quite a punch! I learned that in this thin volume, Dr. Nagy provides readers with information about lineage societies, how to find them, how to learn about their missions, why you might want to join one, and how apply for membership. Rather than a detailed how-to about how to join one society, the book shares general information appropriate to any type of membership application, for any type of society.

Even though I have researched and successfully completed applications for the Sons of the Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW), which was formed by the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) as its successor, I admit to dragging my feet on a more involved membership application. I have been concerned about the quality of proof that I have gathered to document a couple of links in the generations of that application. This uncertainty has made me reluctant to begin the formal application process, so I was interested in reviewing this book.

An important part of applying for a society is understanding the eligibility requirements. The book gives general information about beginning membership application process, then documenting lineage or an ancestor’s qualifying service, and finally completing the application. There is also information about the types of membership that may be available in these societies. At the end of the book is an appendix with selected societies and a brief bibliography.

At the core of applications is the documentation of lineage or service. We are cautioned that applications for lineage societies may require updating the documentation of existing applications lineages to meet current genealogical standards. A valuable part of the book is a summary of documentation to seek when preparing an application: vital records, their substitutes, and qualifying service information. Each entry in the documentation categories might easily be the subject of a course or a book, but having a list of sources to examine in one place is helpful. Some of the valuable advice was to use online family trees as clues.

Dr. Nagy offers valuable advice, as she is a former Registrar of several lineage societies. In the preface, she tells us that compiling an application for a lineage society will use sound genealogical principles, but that it will employ skills that usual genealogy lectures do not cover.

Case Study 1

A family member of mine previously attended an annual Moby Dick Marathon in New Bedford, Massachusetts, so I decided to use the information in the Selected Society Listing Appendix to check out the Descendants of Whaling Masters. Their membership categories include descendants and relatives of masters and crew, but there is also a contributing membership level for interested individuals and youths who are not descendants. The website had a lineage outline form and an application for membership. The application contained information about the sources the society uses for verifying the Whaling Master Ancestor.

Case Study 2

I have been researching ancestors and collecting documentation for a membership application for a large hereditary society, with the intent that I will be well prepared to submit the application. I must confess that I have been uncertain about the quality of “proof” of the collected documentation links between a few generations, which made me hesitant to dive in and begin the process. Interestingly, while researching one of the challenging links, my work was able to provide documentation of a missing link for siblings of that ancestor. Sadly, that record did not explicitly state that the ancestor was linked to the siblings. Given that newspapers may be considered a substitute for vital records, filing that application may be in my near future.

While I know there are always people within a society willing to support applications, I have always wanted to ensure I enter any process on firm footing. Having someone to offer guidance on finding societies, seeking out sources, and navigating the application process can be invaluable. This book fulfills that role and helps you understand what to expect.

The book is available from Genealogical.com at https://genealogical.com/store/the-complete-guide-to-lineage-societies/ and other booksellers.

Note: A review copy was provided by the publisher

WWII Orders of Battle

Since my father’s personnel file burned at the NPRC leaving nothing behind, learning about a military organizations is important so that I can reconstruct his service using organizational records.

The Ike Skelton Combined Arms Research Library (CARL) digital library is home to an important collection for beginning research into military organizations. This massive collection was donated by George Nafziger to the Library. The Nafziger Collection of Orders of Battle contains detailed information about military organizations spanning from 1600 to 1945¸all of which can be downloaded from the website.

The Nafziger Collection of Orders of Battle is available at: https://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15040coll6

The finding aid can be downloaded from by clicking on the link to its page, or from: https://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p4013coll11/id/1277/rec/1

To locate information about WWII, I clicked on the button

This brought me to a search page for the collection that already had the “World War II” filter selected.

There were many results to browse, so in the search bar, I entered the terms: 500th AAA

The results narrowed down to a small number of relevant documents. The first result was the one I wanted, “American antiaircraft artillery, barrage balloon and coast artillery battalions, 1941-1945.”

I clicked on the result and was brought to a page where I could view, download and print the document.

I downloaded this PDF file, and copied the source information into a document where I keep links and annotations about what I locate.

The document is a long table, listing information about all these WWII Battalions.

The first page contains the column headers (slightly misaligned):

Page 5 is the Battalion I am interested in:

What does this mean:

The 500th AAA Gun Battalion (Semimobile) was raised (began on) 20 January 1943. It was disbanded on 20 September 1944.

What to do with this information:

This information about this organization becomes part of the timeline of my father’s service. It will also be combined with information gathered from other sources.

When reconstructing records of my father’s service, this is key information for looking for military organizational records. This will help to unlock the data found in the Morning Reports. Since the Battalion was disbanded in September 1944, I will have to look to those Morning Reports for that month to find out what happened to the men of the organization after that. My father was still in Greenland until November 1944.

Combining this date information with my other reading, it may be that my father was in this Gun Battalion at Camp Davis, NC.

An interesting point is that the 500th AAA Gun Bn was redesignated (renamed) from the 500th CA Bn in June 1944. The redesignation was noted in the Morning Reports. This previous name was not reflected in the list, but combining the date with the older designation will help me locate the appropriate Morning Reports.

Reference from the Department of Veterans Affairs

The Department of Veterans Affairs offers a useful and interesting resource that can be downloaded. It is titled “America’s Wars.”

As the title suggests, it contains a list of US Wars, as well as the years of the conflict. It goes beyond the dates to include the number of service members who were involved and the number of battle deaths. For most wars the number of non-mortal woundings is also reported along with other statistics. Notes that document estimated values are included.

The second page of the reference includes dates of death for the last veteran, the last widow and the last dependent of earlier wars. The U.S. Veterans and Dependents on the VA Benefits Rolls as of 2023 is included. There is also predicted estimates of the number of living WWII veterans until 2039. This is a reminder to interview those who are still among us!

This is a reference you will want to download https://www.va.gov/opa/publications/factsheets/fs_americas_wars.pdf

More WWII Morning Reports using the NARA Catalog

While hunting for the rest of the Morning Reports for Battery A, 500th AAA Gun Battalion, I located a different format of the original roll, that offered a different option for downloading. (You can read how I searched for and download the Morning Reports of the 500th AAA Gun Battalion for September 1943’s at WWII Morning Reports using the NARA Catalog).

The interesting thing about these Morning Reports is that June and July for the same organization were filmed sequentially. This makes me curious if the reason may be related to the redesignation of the Battalion on 8 June, when the Coastal Artillery (CA) Battalions were redesignated Antiaircraft Artillery (AAA) Gun Battalions.

There was another surprise in store: these records could be downloaded in PDF files containing chunks of the Roll. (That means you do not have to download these one-page-at-a-time!)

I searched the NARA Catalog at: https://catalog.archives.gov using the keywords: 500th AAA Gun

I have been going through the results to determine if they relate to the Battalion that I am researching.

This took me to Image 1 (of 640). Not the links next to the thumbnails.

The links on the right side are navigation to the results.

I clicked on the link for Image # 643.

Even though my browser was not loading the PDF file, this page was different than others I had found. It had an option to download the PDF file.

Image # 644 looked familiar to me, based on the Morning Reports I had viewed for this organization. It was a page indicating the previous name of the organization before it had been redesignated.  

The above image is the thumbnail view of the image below.

Of course, I downloaded the PDF file.

The filename was one of the 30 listed below the image, 85713825_1940-01-thru-1943-07_Roll-0711-04.pdf

Rather than have to download each image separately, the downloaded file contained the Morning Reports for June (beginning on 8 June) and July 1943 for Battery C, Battery D and the Medical Detachment of the 500th AAA Gun Bn.

The pdf files present the Morning Reports in chronological order, rather than the way the images are presented counting down (in the order they were photographed on the original roll).

Since this filename with -04 on the end suggested it might the 4th piece of Roll 711 (4 of 4), I took a chance and downloaded the file with -03 on the end.

Page 5 of the pdf had my answer! This file contained the Headquarters Battery of the 500th AAA Gun Bn

Both of these PDF files contained 125 images, so I know that when I locate these downloadable files in future, I will probably have to locate the rest of the organization by checking the files before or after the one that I am viewing.

Although I am not yet sure what triggers the conversion of individual images to being grouped together into PDF files for an organization, I will continue to look for these records and ask questions.  

Minor update: I have located with two links Morning Reports for the 500th AAA Gun Battalion for June and July 1943, with each link leading to a page with a different type of file to download. One link is for downloading individual TIFF file downloads of each page, the other is for downloading PDF files.

The link for downloading individual pages as TIFF files: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/426883037?objectPage=550

The link for downloading PDF files: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/426886040?objectPage=561