Did anyone else find anything good this week? I'm not entirely sure what I've gotten yet. I was up until midnight last night trying to finish off my database. I can't believe it, but I actually did it! (But then today someone told me that they still had access. LOL) Today I added someone that I found I'd missed earlier when I input the 1900 census record for the family. It notified me that it was person #11,200!
It was a monumental task. LOL
I'd started going through & searching on all the men with birth dates to see if I could get any info. Like an idiot, I didn't think to re-sort the list by date until I was about in the middle of the alphabet. It would have been faster that way.
I realized fairly early that there was no point in entering men who were born before 1870 unless I already
knew they'd served at some point. There just wasn't enough info on people - just year of birth for example - to accurately sort out the "right" ones.
"The mustering location here is critical. I dont think that youll even find where they live listed. The mustering sites were regional camps, and there isnt much on the guys that way.."
I had a number of people who served in the Civil War & had already gotten that info. There were a couple who fought in the Revolutionary War, but I've never been able to find anything on them. I'm sure it's one of those things with spelling. Those families were German/PA Dutch & had very difficult names to get right for the poor Enlish guys trying to write them down.
"Rev war, there are so many groups of "army"'s..like militia, continentals, etc..its difficult to find alot of this. Most of it is regional, and you kind of have to go at it that way. Take a suspected area, look for the groups that came out of that area (militarily speaking) and then look for your people..Helped me here in ohio."
I'm still confused as to why certain people didn't show up in the WWII draft list though. DH's grandfather & ggrandfather met the date requirements for the 4th registration. However, neither is there.
Does someone know if foreign born men were exempt for WWII, but not for WWI?
"Im gonna take a stab at this one. Could it be possible that the guys enlisted before they registered, or were required to? I could see recruiters taking guys right of the boat, so to speak.."
And of course I didn't think about the possibility that women might be listed as well!
I'd found a couple wives listed in the US Veterans Gravesites DB, but it wasn't until I hit the "W" people that I ran into an enlistment for a woman in the WACs. DOH!