Military records

Why are they created and what type of information might we find?
Like any organisation a military body needs to know who its members are in order to track such things as experience, training, pay, progress through the ranks, names of any dependants a member might have in case a pension needs to be paid, information on the next of kin in case of death and so on.Often the first record created is an attestation record which is the papers that are filled in when someone signs up for service. These contain a varying amount of information but you usually will find names, birth information, names of the next of kin, and addresses. Other records you may find on someone will depend on their branch of service, how long they served, if they served overseas, whether they got into trouble, and whether they were wounded or died.The military also created birth, marriage and death records which record any of these events happening on a military base or through the auspices of a military chaplain or other officiate.Particular issues with finding military records
Your success in finding information about your military ancestors will depend in part on:- whether they were an officer vs. enlisted as generally it is easier to track officers as more records were kept on them and
- whether you know their regiment’s name, the ship served on and so on. Many record sets are not arranged by individuals’ name so if you are looking at a resource that has not been indexed, then you may have to resort to looking page by page through the resource for your ancestor.
A few research tasks
Try out some databases containing information on military, civil and church records through answering the questions posed in the document which can be found below in the Downloads section. These tasks are totally optional. They use free online databases so no subscriptions are required, we’ve not specified the databases to use for certain questions this time for an extra challenge. We suggest discussing your answers in your Study Group’s discussion area – to access that, click on the Study Group icon at the top of the page.The resources in the ‘See Also’ section below can be consulted for more information on the topic.Genealogy: Researching Your Family Tree

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