What genealogy records can I get from the military? If you had someone who served in the Civil War, the largest abundance of records online are Civil War records. People are putting records online every time you turn around.
If you had someone who served in the Civil War you are lucky because the largest abundance of records online are Civil War records. People are putting records online every time you turn around. The largest body of military records are found on microfilm at the National Archives (http://www.nara.gov), they can be ordered from Washington D.C. or can be found at the Archive's regional branches. The best way to know if you need to go to a military record is to check the dates of the different wars and see if your male ancestor or one of his siblings was old enough to have fought in that war, if so then you can do a search, for example King George's War or the Indian War or Civil War or World War II, and you will find sites that are putting up transcribed records.
In 1790, when our new government took over the United States and we were no longer subjects of the king, the government was pretty much broke and one of the ways that they paid the Revolutionary War soldiers was with land warrants (essentially they gave them land in lieu of money). There were certain things that a man had to go through to claim his land. The records that belong to the bounty land warrants are found at the National Archives and they contain a tremendous amount of information. If a man participated in almost any war from the Revolutionary to the Civil War there were pensions given. Pension record files are a great source of information. You can find military records that give a physical description of the person, where he lived, and what the unit he served with did in the war. World War I draft records are rapidly becoming available online. Right now the original ones are sitting at the National Archives in Atlanta. The majority of men registered for the draft for World War I and all of those records include names, addresses, what they did for a living and who they married and you can get copies of those draft cards. If you had a father or mother that served in World War II and that person is dead there are military records you can order from the Military Personnel Office in St. Louis, MO. Check out (www.cem.va.gov/nprc.htm) for more information
