This year RootsTech is all virtual and free to register! Have you registered?
I hope you will have a chance to check out my lecture: “Write Their Story: From Timeline to Young Readers’ Book” (Lecture Session 471160).
For RootsTech Connect 2021, each lecture session will be 20 minutes long. My lecture will be split across two 20-minute sessions. I hope you will join me!
Session ID: 471160 Session Title: Write Their Story: From Timeline to Young Readers’ Book Session Type: Lecture Session
When more details are shared, I will post them on Facebook, too.
The pandemic has affected every part of our lives, including how people are able to attend religious services. Many people are attending virtual religious services on the web. That means that many places of worship are uploading videos of religious services to the web.
This may be a way that you can attend a religious service where your ancestors worshipped! The services might be hosted on a variety of websites for video services. They might be found on YouTube, Vimeo, or Facebook.
Use Google, or your other favorite search engine, to locate the place of worship that your ancestors attended. You may know the place, or may find it on marriage or other records of events. If you are still unsure, a Google search around their residence may shed light on possibilities. When you visit the homepage for the place, there should be a link to services, or other information leading to how worship is being shared.
It is worth learning some of the history of this place of worship. You may find that it has been renovated since your ancestors worshipped there. It may also be that parts of building were preserved and have remained unchanged.
Last week, I attended Mass at St. Mary’s Church in Newport, RI. This is where my great-great-grandparents were married, where their children were baptized and where their funeral Masses and that of their oldest child were held. It is also where John F. Kennedy wed Jaqueline Bouvier. Being able to virtual attend a Mass there was a virtual trip to a place that is definitely a future destination. The homepage for St. Mary’s has a link to where you can view “Mass Online at St. Mary’s.”
You have probably received, or are about to receive, your
invitation to complete the 2020 U.S. Census online.
One thing I always recommend at census time is saving a paper (and electronic!) copy of the census after you fill it out. Since the censuses are closed for 72 years, how great would be researchers to have copies of our censuses for those years?
I’ve seen a lot of comments about how disappointing it is that you cannot print out all the responses when you are done completing the online forms.
With that in mind, here are two solutions:
1) Take screenshots as you fill out the forms on your
computer. You can save them as images, or just cut-and-paste them into a word processing
document.
– OR –
2) A better choice is probably to download and print a pdf file
of the 2020 Census. Then you can fill it in and have all the answers together in
one place. Of course, feel free to scan it and have it both on paper and electronically!
Rootstech London 2019 is over, but we can still enjoy it. You can download the syllabi from the presentation list here. Click on the arrow next to the name of the presentation to see the description and a link to the syllabus (if there is one).
There are links for RootsTech London 2019 Keynotes & General Sessions and some selected Sessions here. More videos from past RootsTech presentations can also be found on that page.
Are you looking for an easy way to learn about using the National Archives? Would you like to know more about researching your genealogy at NARA?
The 2019 National Archives Virtual Genealogy Fair has come and gone, but the videos have been posted on YouTube, and the handouts are still available. You can learn directly from NARA personnel in the videos and have the handouts for reference. This year’s topics are the History Hub, Preserving Personal Collections, Immigration Records, WWI Navy and Marine Corps Records, Indian Affairs School Records and The Homestead Act.
If you want to head straight to the presentations on YouTube, you can use this link.
Consider taking the time to fill out the Event Evaluation Form to let NARA know how much you appreciate this Virtual Genealogy Fair.
While you are there, follow the links to check out the presentations and handouts for the previous years, too. There are links for the genealogy fairs going back to 2010.
(This is Part 1 of the blog post. Part 2 appears on the Twisted Twigs for Genealogy Blog.)
So many people ask me in person, or post in Facebook groups: “Where do I go to find more about my ancestor’s military service?”. The short answer is that the records you need are at branches of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), but how you get access to them can make a difference.
Undoubtedly you have seen the military records offered on
Ancestry or Fold3. These may be rosters, muster rolls or ship’s manifests that
show where and when an ancestor was associated with a military organization.
You might find summaries of a ancestor’s service, which reveal a few more
details, like the various ranks he held and when he served overseas. In a few
cases, you might find other reports if your ancestor was a downed airmen or was
one of the engineers in WWI who wrote an officer experience reports.
As much as we treasure these bits of information, these records
are little more than tick marks to put on a timeline of your ancestor’s
military life; they really are only the tip of the iceberg. Rather than being a
destination, any record we find in online databases we should consider merely our
ticket to learning so much more.
For each WWI, WWII or Korean War service member, there is an
Official Military Records File (OMPF). The OMPF contains not just the context
but the details of all aspects of an ancestor’s time in the service. It
includes the schools, commendations, hospitalization, transfers, transportation
and all the details of a military life. Every part of an active duty military
life is copied over and incorporated into one file.
The OMPF contains an actual book summarizing your ancestor’s
time in the military, a Service Record. The Service Record contains 24 to 28
pages full of information such as immunizations he received, what schools he
attended, awards and commendations he received, enlistment information,
beneficiary information, records of courts martial (if applicable) , comments
about his character and efficiency rating.
In the OMPF, there is also a Report of Separation which is a
summary of the whole time an ancestor was in service. There are reports of
physical exams prior to discharge (or retirement), medical and dental records
including when he visited the dispensary (doctor’s office). The Report of
Medical History includes health history about his family. Other highlights of
the OMPF are Commissioning documents (for officers), special orders for
transfers or promotions, and records of leave that was taken, and the address
where he went. If the service member had been a military cadet, there would be
an application, birth certificate, school transcripts, letters of
recommendation.
There may be a complication in finding these files, but the records that were used to build them still exist!
Were all the OMPFs burned in the 1973 fire in St. Louis?
NO!
No Navy or Marine Corps OMPFs were burned.
Of the 80% of the Army and Air Force OMPFs that were burned,
some files are being restored. It is always worth checking with NARA in case
your ancestor’s file is one of those.
If the OMPF is truly unavailable, then a researcher has to consult the original records that were used to build the OMPF. These are the records that are held in a variety of NARA record groups that include information about all the service members of an organization. The researcher then needs to pull out information that either names the ancestor or applies to the ancestor’s service. In future posts, we will cover the record sets at NARA locations that are most useful to researchers learning about their ancestor’s military service history.
Please head over to the Twisted Twigs Blog for the second part of this post. It contains information about your options to get an OMPF, or a reconstructed OMPF.
7th Generation Detroit Family Historian and NARA Records Retrieval Expert, Deidre Erin Denton of Twisted Twigs Genealogy and Margaret McMahon, author of “Researching Your U.S. WWI Army Ancestors, have teamed up for a series of blog posts to show you the path to researching the military records for WWI, WWII and the Korean War at NARA. Because of your connection to your ancestor, you are the best teller of his story, and with these records you can write and share a very personal military history.
