How to Find an Ancestor Who Served in an American War Using Public Records

Somewhere in your family there is a man or woman who wore the uniform, and the family has already half forgotten what they did. A shoebox photograph. A name on the back of a picture with no date. A story told once at a funeral and never written down. I want to talk you out of letting that stay a mystery, because I have good news. The records that tell you who they were are mostly free, mostly public, and mostly waiting.

Let me be upfront about two things. First, the news is not all good. A huge number of twentieth-century Army records burned in a fire in 1973, and I will tell you what that means for your search and how to work around it. Second, this is a how-to, not a sermon, so I will keep the steps exact. But I will say one thing before we begin. Searching for an ancestor's service is one of the best things a family can do together. It teaches history through a person, and it pays the oldest debt there is, which is remembering the name.

Here is the plan, in seven steps. Do them in order. Each step feeds the next, and you will save yourself a good deal of money and frustration if you resist the urge to skip to the national databases before you have done the kitchen-table work.

Step 1: Start with what the family already has

Before you request a single government record, gather what is already in the house. The more you know when you start, the faster the official records can be found, because the archives search by name, date of birth, service number and branch.

1. Ask the oldest relatives what they remember, and write down every name, date, place and nickname, even if you are not sure it is right. A wrong date written down is a clue. A date nobody wrote down is a loss.
2. Look through the family papers. Check shoeboxes, Bibles, albums, trunks and attics for these items: discharge papers, medals and ribbons, letters, photographs in uniform, dog tags, a flag from a funeral, an obituary, a church bulletin, a marriage certificate, a newspaper clipping.
3. Look closely at any photograph in uniform. Unit patches, collar insignia, cap badges and ribbons identify the branch and sometimes the unit. A local veterans' group or a museum may help you read them.
4. Check the draft card, if you have one. This one deserves its own note, below.
5. Make a one-page summary of what you know: full name, birth date and place, service branch, war, rank if known, unit if known, and where the person lived. Keep it with you.

About draft cards. Registration for the draft is a better paper trail than most people expect. For the First World War, men registered in three rounds in 1917 and 1918, covering roughly twenty-four million men, and the cards record the man's full name, date and place of birth, citizenship, occupation and a personal description. For the Second World War, the fourth registration in April 1942 covered men roughly forty-five to sixty-four years old, born between 1877 and 1897, and it was meant to take stock of manpower, not to draft those men. Note that a draft card proves a man registered, not that he served. Many registered men were never called. But the card gives you the identifying details you need to find the actual service record.

Step 2: Know the limits of the National Archives and the 1973 fire

The National Archives and Records Administration holds the country's military service records. Most twentieth-century personnel files are at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri. And this is where I must tell you about the fire.

On July 12, 1973, a fire at the St. Louis records center destroyed a very large number of Official Military Personnel Files. The archives' own figures say roughly eighty percent of the files for Army personnel discharged between November 1, 1912 and January 1, 1960 were lost, and roughly seventy-five percent of the files for Air Force personnel discharged between September 25, 1947 and January 1, 1964, with surnames from Hubbard through Z. There were no duplicate copies, and no microfilm.

I give you the numbers so you can judge your own odds. They do not mean your search is hopeless. Here is what the fire means in practice:

1. Not every file burned. Many records from affected years survived, some of them water-damaged or charred, and the losses described above were of Army and Air Force files. Always ask.
2. The archives reconstruct. When a file is lost, the staff at the St. Louis center can often rebuild the basics of a person's service from other records: final pay vouchers, Selective Service records, VA claim files, hospital admission cards, state adjutant general records, and unit rosters. A reconstructed record is not as rich as an original, but it often proves service and gives dates.
3. Say what you need and give the center every detail. The more you tell them about the dates, branch and unit, the better the chances.
4. Look elsewhere in parallel. The records below do not depend on the personnel file.

Two more points about access. Records of people who left military service more than sixty-two years ago are treated as archival and are open to the public. Records of more recent veterans are restricted to the veteran and, in many cases, to the next of kin, and you may need to prove the relationship, usually with a death certificate. And records for service before the First World War are generally held in Washington, D.C., instead of St. Louis. The Army's records for soldiers who left service before November 1912, for example, are in the Washington area, where they are organized by war and unit.

Step 3: Use the pension and service files for earlier wars

If your ancestor served before the twentieth century, the pension file may be the best find in the whole hunt.

1. Revolutionary War. Congress passed pension laws in 1818 and 1832, and thousands of old soldiers filed sworn statements about their service. The files are at the National Archives, and they often include the man's own account of the battles he saw.
2. War of 1812. Pension and bounty-land files exist, along with compiled service records of men who served in state militia and volunteer units.
3. Civil War. Union veterans and their widows filed for pensions, and the files can be very thick, with medical examinations, affidavits from comrades, marriage records and even letters. These are at the National Archives. Confederate veterans' pensions were granted by the individual states, not the federal government, so Confederate pension records are held by state archives, and you should look in the state where the man lived in later life.
4. The 1890 census and its Veterans Schedule. The general 1890 census was largely destroyed in a fire in 1921, but part of the special schedule that listed Union veterans and widows survives for many states. It can place a man in a town in 1890 and give his unit and years of service.

A pension file is a conversation across time. Read every page. Look for the names of comrades, because each name is another trail.

Step 4: Search the VA's Nationwide Gravesite Locator

Now you can turn to the gravesites. The Department of Veterans Affairs runs a free online tool called the Nationwide Gravesite Locator, which searches for the burial places of veterans and their eligible family members in national cemeteries, in state veterans cemeteries and in some other military and federal cemeteries, along with veterans buried in private cemeteries whose graves carry a government marker. Arlington National Cemetery and the overseas cemeteries have their own search tools.

How to use it:

1. Search by the person's full name. Try variant spellings, and the name with and without a middle initial.
2. If you get too many hits, narrow by birth and death year, branch, or war, using the ranges you collected in Step 1.
3. When you find a match, copy down every detail the locator gives: the cemetery, the section, the grave number, rank, branch, and dates. Match those details against your family summary before you assume it is the same man.
4. Call the cemetery office if you want to visit. National cemeteries have staff who can direct you.

Remember what the locator is not: it does not list every veteran in every cemetery. A man buried in a churchyard on a family plot may have a stone that no government database knows about. For that, go back to your family papers, the county's cemetery surveys, and the local historical society, as described in How to Mark America's 250th Birthday in Your Own Town and With Your Own Family.

Step 5: Search the American Battle Monuments Commission database

If the ancestor died overseas or is listed among the missing, the American Battle Monuments Commission is the place to look. Congress created the ABMC in 1923, with General John J. Pershing as its first chairman, to honor American service members who fought overseas. It maintains permanent American military cemeteries and memorials on foreign soil, including the cemeteries in Normandy and elsewhere in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, the Philippines and other nations.

The commission keeps a public online database of the service members it commemorates, whether they are buried in its cemeteries or listed on the Tablets of the Missing.

1. Search by name. Results typically give rank, unit, service number, date of death, home state, and the burial or memorial location.
2. Note the cemetery and plot, row and grave. If you plan to visit, the cemetery staff can help, and many cemeteries keep records and can tell you about the sites.
3. Remember that many American war dead from the world wars were returned home at the families' request, and so a man who died overseas may be buried in a national cemetery or a family plot in the United States rather than overseas. Check the VA locator too.
4. If your ancestor is among the missing, ask the commission and the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency what is known and whether anyone has been identified. I am not going to describe current cases, because they change, so ask for the latest directly.

This is a good moment to read about the people involved. The Harlem Hellfighters Spent 191 Days Under Fire and Came Home Heroes and D-Day Was Won by Sergeants and Privates When the Plan Fell Apart on the Beaches are two stories of the kind of units and days you may find your ancestor in.

Step 6: Request the records with Standard Form 180

Now you are ready to ask for the file. The basic request form is Standard Form 180, officially "Request Pertaining to Military Records." It is accepted by the National Personnel Records Center, and a version of the request can also be made through the archives' online request system. Most basic requests are free, but fees apply to some copies, notably full files of older, archival records. Check the archives' current instructions for who must pay what, because the rules and fee schedules change.

How to fill it out:

1. Identify the person. Full name as used in service, service number if known, Social Security number if known, date and place of birth, branch, and dates of service. If you do not know something, leave it blank, but give every identifier you have.
2. State who you are. You must say whether you are the veteran, next of kin, or someone else, and give your relationship. For deceased veterans, next of kin means the surviving spouse, the unmarried widow or widower, a parent, a child, or a sibling. Proof of death is usually required for recent records.
3. Say what you want. Ask for the whole personnel file, or for particular items: the discharge form (for the Army the typical form is the DD-214 for recent service, and earlier separation papers for earlier service), medical records, or service dates.
4. Mention the fire if relevant. If the person served in the affected years, ask the center to reconstruct from alternative sources and to tell you which sources it searched.
5. Sign and date. The form requires a signature. An unsigned request is returned.
6. Be patient. Archives have backlogs, and a request can take weeks or months. Do not send a second request unless the center tells you to. Keep copies of everything you send.

The other path for older service is to order from the National Archives directly for records over sixty-two years old, which are open to anyone. For records before the Second World War, check the archives' guidance on how those are requested.

Step 7: Write the story down for the next generation

This is the step everyone skips, and it is the whole reason for the others. When you have found the records, you have a handful of dates and a service number. That is not a story yet. Turn it into one.

1. Build a timeline. Date of birth, enlistment or draft, training, units, places, battles, wounds, promotions, discharge, return home, later life. Mark each entry with its source, such as "pension file, page 14," so a descendant knows how you know.
2. Learn the unit's history. Find out what the unit did on each date. The archives hold unit records, and many units have published histories. Read about the places. Our posts on Valley Forge Was a Winter of Hunger That Turned Farmers Into an Army, Sergeant York Captured 132 Germans in the Argonne and Went Home to Tennessee and The Navajo Code Talkers Built an Unbreakable Code From Their Own Language show how much a well-told account of one unit or one man can teach.
3. Write in plain language. Two pages is plenty. Say who the person was, what they did, and what the family remembers. Include a photograph, and name everyone in it.
4. Separate fact from family legend. If the family says he was at a famous battle and the records place his unit elsewhere, write both. Do not delete the legend. Label it.
5. Share it widely. Give copies to relatives, the county historical society and the local library. If the person is a veteran of the last century, consider offering the account to the Library of Congress Veterans History Project, which accepts materials about veterans' service.
6. Keep the originals safe. Store papers in acid-free folders away from heat and damp, and make digital copies.
7. Say thank you in a tangible way. Visit the grave with the family, lay a flag, and read the account aloud there.

If you want to know what the highest honor looks like in a record, see What the Medal of Honor Is, Who Awards It and How a Citation Is Written. And if you find that your ancestor was an ordinary private who did ordinary duty and went home, take heart, because that is the grandest story of all. Most of the men who won the wars were not famous. They were somebody's husband or father.

A word of caution

Records contain errors. Clerks misspelled names, birth dates were fudged by young men who wanted to enlist, and some veterans changed their names. Treat any single document as a clue, not a verdict, and look for two sources that agree. Be careful of online family trees that copy each other's guesses. And be careful with commercial record-search sites that charge a monthly fee for documents the archives will give you for little or nothing. Some of those sites are useful, but you should know what is free before you pay.

The case in brief

1. Begin at the kitchen table: family papers, photographs, letters and draft cards give you the names and dates the archives need.
2. The National Archives and its St. Louis records center hold the service files, but the 1973 fire destroyed about eighty percent of Army files for 1912 to 1960 discharges and about seventy-five percent of Air Force files for 1947 to 1964, Hubbard through Z, so ask for reconstruction and use other sources too.
3. Pension files for earlier wars, the VA's Nationwide Gravesite Locator and the American Battle Monuments Commission database each answer different questions and are free to search.
4. Standard Form 180, filled in with every identifier you have and mailed with patience, is how you request the file.
5. The last step matters most: write the person's story down, label what you know and how you know it, and give copies to the next generation.

What you can do: this weekend, interview the oldest relative you can reach and write down the full name, branch and dates of one ancestor who served, then file your first records request.