Family History Outing: National Museum of the Marine Corps

Have you ever wondered what it was like to land on Iwo Jima? Maybe you have wanted to look at the larger, second flag to be raised by the Marines on Mt. Suribachi. Do you want to see a combat helicopter up close or exit from its inside into a combat area?

The National Museum of the Marine Corps http://www.usmcmuseum.com/ is located in Quantico, VA. The Museum is a terrific place to visit with your family whether or not you have Marines in your family history. But if you have ancestors or family members in the Marine Corps, this will be a special experience for you.

There are interactive experiences throughout the museum that give context to the experiences of the being a Marine and the Marines role in the history of the United States. You can receive a briefing before landing at Iwo Jima and experience the view from a landing craft. You can exit a helicopter in a war zone. You can learn what games Marines played in the Revolutionary War. You can examine the version of the Eagle, Globe and Anchor that your Marine wore.

Docents are located throughout the museum. Take time to ask them questions. They may even walk up to you, and offer to give you more information about the display or area. The docents are Marines, who may have been participants in what you are seeing. They are incredibly knowledgeable about the displays themselves; one shared with us how body casts were made from current Marines for the Sikorsky UH-34D helicopter display in the Leatherneck Gallery that depicting depicts the opening morning of Operation Starlite in Vietnam in August 1965.

 

 

Many aircraft flown by the Marines are displayed from the ceilings throughout the museum, allowing you to get a different perspective of them than you usually do in a static display. The bottom of an A-4E was used as a screen to project a video.

 

 

Timelines are an important tool, and the long wall with the Marine Corps timeline is no exception. When you check the timeline and mention who the Commandant was when your Marine joined, it opens the door to stories about the beginning of a military career. For those Marines who are not with you, the timeline gives context to the times they served.

The museum’s website warns that the depiction of battle scenes may be too intense for young children, so check out the website and decide for yourself.

We also made a stop at the Quantico National Cemetery. The flags on the graves were impressive and moving. Remember that you can locate veteran graves by searching the National Gravesite Locator  http://gravelocator.cem.va.gov.

 

 

Stay tuned for a post about Marines in WWI.

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Take a Tour: NARA WWI Page

For the centennial of the U.S. entering WWI, NARA launched a new portal page for WWI Research.

 

 

The Genealogy Resources takes you to a page where you can start Researching Individuals in WWI Records. (Keep that in mind, and return to it after your tour of this page.)

Keep scrolling to find a section where you can choose from several World War I Topics.

 

 

Scroll even farther down for a World War I Timeline, and More Resources.

Explore the page and resources.

When you are ready to start your own research, a good place to start is NARA’s webpage Researching Individuals in WWI Records. A good resource is an article from NARA’s Prolog publication: An Overview of Records at the National Archives Relating to Military Service.

 

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5 Ancestry.com Databases for WWI Research

Among Ancestry.com’s databases, are some really interesting ones that will help you to research your WWI ancestors. This post covers five of the United States databases.

 

1. Whether or not your ancestor fought in World War I, this is a go-to database for finding men between 18 and 45 years old. The information includes a man’s birth date and place, occupation, address, physical description, and the name and address of the next of kin. The information on these cards will not tell you if the ancestor served, but can help you to verify if the military records you find are for the same man.

This database was updated on 4/6/2017. I know it is hard not to just jump in and search, but make some time to read the helpful hints in the database description.

U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918

 

2. If your ancestor served, there may be an application for a military headstone. These applications include information about the military unit in which your ancestor served, which is key to continuing research into his military life.

U.S., Headstone Applications for Military Veterans, 1925-1963

 

3. Over ten percent of the soldiers who served in WWI were from New York State, making this is an important database for many researchers. New York state created these abstracts from the military records that were ultimately destroyed in the National Personnel Records Center fire in 1973. They contain information about service organization(s) with assignment dates and transfers, ranks and promotion, dates of oversea service and injuries These cards typically had a front and a back, so be sure to select the next page to see the back of the card (if it is included). You can even find female ancestors in this database.

New York, Abstracts of World War I Military Service, 1917-1919

 

4. This database contains records for officers in the New York National Guard. It contains cards for the officers, and it contains more than WWI records. According to the database description, there may be cards for some Non-Commissioned Officers and Enlisted personnel, but I have yet to find any.

New York, Military Service Cards, 1816-1979

 

5. If you had a Jewish soldier, The American Jewish Committee (AJC) Office of Jewish War Records sent out surveys to soldiers that were assumed to be Jewish to the service of Jews in the American armed forces. Be sure to look at the pages after the questionnaire in case supporting documents were included.

U.S., WWI Jewish Servicemen Questionnaires, 1918-1921

 

Searching the Card Catalog for keywords “WWI” will bring up more databases, including British and U.K. records. Searching for “World War I” brought up records for both WWI and WWII.

A WWI MOOC

Have you been looking for an online course about WWI? “World War 1: A History in 100 Stories” at FutureLearn may be of interest to you. The course is a Massively Open Online Course (MOOC). It is different from a regular course because of its size, and also because you will interact more with the other people in the course than with any faculty.

 

 

This is a five-week class is presented by Monash University in Australia. It is based on the One Hundred Stories Project at that University. You can learn more about the project here.

Even though the class is focused on Australian participation in WWI, there will be common threads about the war and the home front that might be of interest to you. Like Americans, Australians were fighting a war very far from home. Unlike Americans, they participated in the war from its beginning. Viewing this course gives a larger picture about this global, war that was the first war of modern combat.

You can participate in this MOOC for free, but if you want a Statement of Participation there is a fee. You will need to sign up for a free account to access the course and its materials.

The link for the course is: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/ww1-stories

You can see all the courses listed at: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses. Keep in mind that the courses are predominantly from U.K. schools.

Be sure to check out the https://www.futurelearn.com/learning-guideCrowdsourced Guide to Learning.

Note: Unless you pay for the upgrade, the materials in the course are only available during the timeframe of the course.

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4 Ways To Find A Genealogical Society

There are many reasons to join a local genealogical society. Societies have knowledgeable members and sponsor educational events. Even if you do not have ancestors who lived in your current location, you may find members researching those locations. Finding people who share your interest in genealogy can be very energizing!

But, have you considered contacting or joining a society in a location where your ancestors lived? The society may have useful resources or participate in projects that could benefit your research. There may be experts in the society to help you with local research.

 

1. The Federation of Genealogical Societies 

The FGS maintains a list of member societies. You can search by name or use the dropdown box to select your state.

 

 

2. Search the listing at D’addezio.com

D’addezio.com hosts a Directory of Historical Societies in the United States, Canada and Australia. These listings include genealogical societies.

Click on the link for your state of interest to see a list of genealogical and historical societies. Many of the listings just show mailing addresses, so you may have to Google the name to look for an online presence.

 

 

3. Use Google to find a society.

Use search terms that include your state or city and genealogical society
Example:  maryland genealogical society
If the state has two words, use quotes around the state’s name:
“new york” genealogical society

 

4. Search Facebook For A Society
You use search terms on Facebook, just as you do in Google, to learn about societies.
Alternately, you can download the free list compiled by Katherine R. Willson from her Social Media Genealogy website. As of February 2017 this PDF has 308 pages with more than 10,600 links. Note, you will only find nonprofit organizations in this list.

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Using MET Public Domain Artwork

Recently, the Metropolitan Museum of Art made than 375,000 of its public-domain artworks available online. The Met’s images include those of items that are not currently on display, which gives you a chance to look behind the scenes.

This is a great resource for people who enjoy art and history, scholars, and genealogists!

You can find the search page at: http://metmuseum.org/art/collection.

 

 

To limit your search to return only those results in the public domain, in the Show Only group, click the box for “Public Domain Artworks”.

 

 

When you view the results, there may be some that do not seem to be related to your search terms. Be sure to scroll down through the results. To scan through the results more quickly, you can choose to display a larger number of results per page.

 

 

Since I have been doing a lot of World War I research, I used the keywords: World War 1. That returned 5,964 results. It appeared that many of the results had the terms separately, such as world or war.
Searching for keywords: world war i returned 1,699 results. A number of these results were relevant to the First World War. There were several commercial color lithographs published by groups involved in the war effort, like the Red Cross and the Connecticut State Council of Defense.

 

 

Searching using the keywords and quotes around them “world war i” returned 84 results. Some were not related to the First World War.

I experimented using a numeral 1 instead of the letter i. “world war 1” returned 0 results.

Searching for keywords: WWI returned 17 results. One was lace shawl handmade by a member of the Royal Family in England that was donated to the British War Relief Committee during WWI.

Next, I tried searching for keywords: St Mihiel. Two of the results were related to St. Mihiel in WWI. Other St. Mihiel results included engravings and etchings from the opera and ballet.

 

 

To learn more about the website, check out http://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/policies-and-documents/image-resources

To see all Open Access items, go to http://metmuseum.org/art/collection#!?showOnly=openaccess

Visit this website, and try out some searches for a topic you are researching. Remember to vary your search terms and try different combinations of words relating to your topic. Look for artwork that you can use about:

• A state you are researching
• A country or place you are researching
• An event you are researching

Good luck!

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