Researching Missouri WWI Ancestors

As you may know from my lectures and book, it is important to find your WWI ancestor’s military organization. An online way to find out about your Missouri WWI Ancestors is to search the Missouri Digital Heritage website.

 

When you are ready to search, Click on “Search the Soldier’s Records Database”, Scroll down to the search boxes or click here.

There are records from many conflicts, from the War of 1812 to WWI. You can leave the selection at All.

Be sure to enter the name as: Last Name, First Name

PVT Acie Sparkman was from Missouri, he was with Ambulance Company 40 at Camp Wadsworth, SC, then served with the 51st Pioneer Infantry Co. L. He died overseas. I entered:

Sparkman, Acie

And selected “All Service Records”

There was only one record returned.

Click on “View Details”.

Researching Indiana WWI Ancestors

As you may know from my lectures and book, it is important to find your WWI ancestor’s military organization. An online way to find out about your Indiana WWI Ancestors is to check the Indiana United States Veterans of the Great War I.

It is worth reading the home page about Indiana in the Great War. (Beware of the links on the right side of the page; they take you to other websites.) The links on the left are to WWI topics, which include information gathered from oral interviews conducted with Indiana WWI veterans.

In addition to searching for the veteran’s service summary as described below, remember to search the website for your ancestor. There is a search box on the left menu, but I had better luck using Google. I searched for the ancestor name and used the site specifier, for example:

“Ernest Franklin Hess” site:www.wwvets.com

When you are ready to search for your Indiana WWI veteran, click on the search button on the home page, or go here.

You will need to use both a Last Name and a First Name for a search. I was not able to use a wildcard for the first name.

Searching for John Smith returned surnames that are Smith and begin with Smith

Clicking on the first result gave me a service summary.

I searched for a different name in the database:  McMahon, James. All three of the detailed results showed: “Listed in the Indiana War Memorials records having served in WWI”, which does not provide much help to a researcher.

The sources used to compile the database can be found here.

 

 

Researching Connecticut WWI Ancestors

Researching Connecticut WWI Ancestors

Connecticut is a special place, filled with beautiful scenery and gorgeous fall colors. My years in Connecticut were spent studying and researching for my PhD. So, when I learned of some great resources for WWI research in Connecticut, I had to post them.

The Connecticut State Library has an introductory page describing their holdings in the state archives.

 

As you probably know, finding a summary for your WWI Veteran’s service is the key to unlocking more records about his service.

The Internet Archive offers three volumes of Service records: Connecticut men and women in the armed forces of the United States during World War, 1917-1920 These books are downloadable in a variety of electronic formats. There is an index in Volume 3.

• Volume 1
• Volume 2
• Volume 3

The Homepage for the Questionnaires filled out by WWI veterans or their families is here.

These records are also available, indexed on Ancestry.com  Connecticut, Military Questionnaires, 1919-1920. To use this database, Connecticut residents can sign up for a free account at Ancestry.com, using the link.

The Internet Archive also has a downloadable History of Hamden men in the World War.

Connecticut in WWI can be found here. You can add your WWI story to their website, and subscribe to their newsletter.

Connecticut history in WWI can be found here. This website contains links to books, places, documents and websites.

Good luck researching your WWI Ancestors in Connecticut, and let me know how you do.

Researching Virginia WWI Ancestors

As you may know from my lectures and book, it is important to find your WWI ancestor’s military organization. An online way to find out about your Virginia WWI Ancestors is to check the WWI questionnaires posted at the Library of Virginia.

For this example, I searched for a record for SGT Earle Davis Gregory. He was the only Medal of Honor winner in WWI from Virginia.

Click on the name to find out more about the record.

A window pops up with links to look at or download the survey pages

This record is his personal survey.

While searching, I found this record with information about the soldier’s service, an ancestor, and his mother’s maiden name.

Virginia’s WWI and WWII Centennial Commission has resources that may help  you learn more about Virginia in the World Wars. On this website you can find WWI Profiles of Honor Stories.

Be sure to check out the resources on the WWI Centennial Commission Website for Virginia.

 

 

 

The Edward Jones Research Center

The Edward Jones Research Center is the archives of the WWI Museum and Memorial, located at the Museum’s lowest level.

This Research Center holds some resources that may help with your research.

For example, there are 23 volumes of “Official Roster of Ohio Soldiers, Sailors and Marines”. Their holdings include volumes from several other states and even counties that published books listing all the men who served in the Great War. In these books is an entry for each service member, listing an abstract of his service. The entries contain the same data that is in the NY Service Abstracts.

Since the most of the personnel files were burned in the National Personnel Records Center, these books would be invaluable for researchers who do not know their ancestors’ military organization.

You can perform an online search of the collections at the World War I Museum and Memorial website

Select “Begin Your Search” and enter your keyword. In this example, I entered: 51st Pioneer Infantry.

The search returned items relating to the Pioneer Infantry, with over three thousand results. While it is great to know that there are many items about the Pioneers, my search terms needed to be more specific.

I decided to use quotes to be more specific: “51st Pioneer Infantry”, and received no results.

Next, I searched for the term: 51st Infantry

The results included the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) 51st Brigade and Col. Moses N. Thisted’s book, “Pershing’s Pioneers”.

My best tip: Be sure to contact the archivists before your trip to see what else might be available, or what suggestions they might have.

You will probably find a copy of “Researching Your U.S. WWI Army Ancestors” on the shelves.

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WWI Military Organizations: Finding More

So, you used the service summary cards or the U.S. Army Transport Service records to find your WWI soldier’s military organization. Now you want to find out more.

As much as it pains me to say, sometimes jumping into Google does not yield too much. Recently, I had a situation like that.

The organization in question was the 60th Engineers. It was proving very difficult to find much information about them.

So, I asked an historian, Peter Belmonte, for some ideas. Peter is the author of two volumes (so far) of “Calabrian-Americans in the US Military During World War I”, and “Days of Perfect Hell: The U.S. 26th Infantry Regiment in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, October-November 1918”, and co-author of other books about WWI.  (His books are available at Amazon, and he has generously agreed to a future interview for this blog.)

Peter recommended the “Order of Battle of the United States Land Forces in the World War, Zone of the Interior: Directory of Troops Volume 3, Part 3 contains Chapter V, Directory of Troops“. This reference shows when the organization was established, its stations in the U.S. and place of embarkation and the dates it served overseas.

The entry for the 60th Engineers appears on page 1336 of Volume 3. They were a standard gauge railway operation battalion, and the same month that they arrived in Europe, September 1918, they were converted to the 60th Regt T. C. The engineer corps railway units had converted to the transportation corps.

 

Following this thread in the same reference, we find that the 60th Regiment of the Transportation Corps served overseas from September to December 1918. The S.O.S. troops provided Services of Supply.

 

Having this information also gives you another avenue of searching, records for the 60th Regiment Transportation Corps.

The lesson to learn here is if you cannot find much information about a military organization, do a little digging to see if it might have been redesignated or reorganized.

 

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