Wishing All those in the Military a Very Merry Holiday Season

The 45-year old Christmas Day dinner menu has been a long-cherished memento from my Army days. Look over the wonderful foods we were served at Fort Belvoir, Virginia on Christmas in 1974. I wonder if the military still serves delicious food on this day. Many blessings to all the servicemen and servicewomen who are spending Chrismas far from home.

I decided to research the commanding officer, Lloyd B. McCabe. A picture of his tombstone may be seen at Arlington National Cemetery.

Fort Belvoir is 4 miles from Mount Vernon and about 16 miles from Washington, D.C.

Lowell, MA Roll of Honor --- 2,100 Names

The Lowell (MA) City Directory of 1918 "containing a General Directory of the citizens, house directory, business directory, street directory and record of the city government, institutions, etc." And, I recently discovered there is a listing of 2,100 "Lowell men  in the service of the United Stated and her Allies in the Great World War." Although I don't have any ancestors from Lowell, I thought this list provided useful information. There are 18 scanned pages, and the first one describes how the information was obtained. The names are in alphabetical order and I made the pages extra large for easier reading (however, some won't enlarge). In 1918 there was a population of approximately 115,000 people.

This 1918 city directory is my personal copy, and if anybody needs a look-up please contact me.

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NARA Separation Form 214 For Free

The National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) is located in St. Louis, Missouri. If you are looking for your father's, mother's or brother's military record, you might be able to find it here, at a ridiculous low price of FREE. After going to the home page of the NPRC,  click on the Personnel Records, Quick Find, shown below. My example is for "the veteran separated from military service before 1951 (for my father).

Personnel Records, Quick Find:

MILITARY PERSONNEL RECORDS
If the veteran separated from military service before 1951	If the veteran separated from military service after 1950

CIVILIAN PERSONNEL RECORDS
If the Federal civil servant's employment ended before 1952	If the Federal civil servant's employment ended after 1951

Step two is click on the link in this sentence.  Please order these records by using the process outlined in, "How to Access Archival Records, Official Military Personnel Files (OMPF)". (Even though there is considerable information, you probably won't need to figure anything out. I found it was easier to put in information about my father, then just see if I qualified for the information, and more importantly, see if there was information.

After clicking on the "How to Access..." (above link) you will be brought to How do I request copies of records? Read everything, then click on REQUEST RECORDS ONLINE!

You are brought to: Online Requests Using eVetRecs

“Our online eVetRecs system creates a customized order form to request information from your, or your relative's, military personnel records. You may use this system if you are:

·                          A military veteran, or 

·                          Next of kin of a deceased, former member of the military. The next of kin can be any of the following:

o                                          Surviving spouse that has not remarried

o                                          Father

o                                          Mother

o                                          Son

o                                          Daughter

o                                          Sister

o                                          Brother

Please note:   Records are accessioned into the National Archives, and become archival, 62 years after the service member's separation from the military. This is a rolling date; hence, the current year, 2012, minus 62 years is 1950. Records with a discharge date of 1950 or prior are archival and are open to the public. Records with a discharge date of 1950 or after are non-archival and are maintained under the Federal Records Center program. Non-archival records are subject to access restrictions.   Learn more”

Click on: Launch theeVetRecs System to start your requestOnline.

This is where you begin filling out your information, such as: Your relationship to the Deceased, Branch of Service, Officer or Enlisted, Reason for information, such as medical, genealogy, retirement, and others. I selected medical since I wasn't sure what would happen with the genealogy option. I also needed to provide the name, birth date, and other bits of information, nothing too difficult. Since this was done in August 2010, I don't recall everything, but do know it was very easy. I received immediate online verification, just to be sure they had a record for my father, and a form, shown below.  I had to sign it, and mail it to them before I could receive two copies of the record.

A few weeks later, I received Form 214, Report of Separation (shown below) with information on my father. (I used white-out on some of his personal information.)

Civil War Pension Research: Union Soldiers

Union Soldiers

When David Allen Lambert speaks, I listen. He has been an employee of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) for at long as I've been going there, a good 15 years. He knows his stuff, especially cemeteries, genealogy research and military history and records.

Recently he posted a link via Facebook, to his NEHGS lecture titled, "Civil War Pension Research: Union Soldiers," and I immediately asked him if I could copy it to my blog. Without hesitation, he gave me permission to post his talk on researching your Union Civil War Ancestor. There are 26 slides ranging from 16 seconds to 1.39 seconds, each covering a type of document possibly found in the pension file. The pension research lecture starts up immediately and the nice thing about it is, you can start and stop, replay as many times as you like. This makes for easy note taking.


Don't  miss viewing slides #12 and 16, covering Forms 3-447 and 3-389.