Some people eat, sleep and chew gum, I do genealogy and write...

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

A Surprising Record Source



This is an Application for Headstone for a veteran. If you look closely at this form you will see that it contains at least the following information (and a lot more):
  • name
  • birth date
  • enlistment date
  • rank
  • unit
  • discharge date
  • death date
  • cemetery name
  • cemetery place
  • marker type
  • religious emblem
  • medals
  • name and relationship of applicant"
Ancestry.com has images of these forms in its database entitled, "U.S., Headstone Applications for Military Veterans, 1925-1963." It seems like the more I look, the more I find. This is the Application for my Grandfather who fought in World War I. I suggest that looking for sources is more productive than just accumulating dates and places. The sources can be surprising, like this one, that gives additional places to search as well as information that I did not previously have. 

2 comments:

  1. Thank you for this post. Ancestry adds so many records that it is difficult to notice them all. I will have to check this collection.

    My grandfather fought in WWI too, but on the German side.

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  2. Hey, man, thanks for posting about this. I found my great-grandfather's headstone application.

    He was in World War I, but until now, I've had scant details about what exactly he did. (On this part of my family tree, I've had to do all the research myself, starting nearly from scratch.) It's also nice to see my great-grandmother's signature; I'd never seen it before.

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