In honor of Veterans Day, here are some resources to research your ancestors’ military service. All are
free and accessible with your library card.
Fold3.com is known for its military records collections. It can be used at the library or from home. It is
very easy to search on your ancestor’s name for a particular conflict or time period.
You can also use Ancestry.com Library Edition to search for military records. (This database can only be
used in the library.) It should be noted that Ancestry.com owns Fold3.com so some of the records you
will find in Ancestry.com also appear in Fold3.
Examples of records you might find on Ancestry.com include: World War I Draft Registration Cards,
World War II Draft Registration cards, muster rolls, Civil War pension index, U.S. Army enlistment
records, and U.S. National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers.
MyHeritage.com Library Edition also contains U.S. military records. Though it has many of the same
records as Ancestry.com Library Edition, the big advantage is that you can view these records from
home.
Examples of records you might find include: Air Force Register Extracts, Arlington National Cemetery
headstones index, World War II Reserve Corps records, and U.S World War II Prisoners of War.
The following are links to free websites where you can do more research on your ancestor’s military
service:
• Nationwide grave locator for all U.S. veterans’ cemeteries: Provides birth and death dates, military
service branch, where buried and dates served. Website: http://gravelocator.cem.va.gov
• Listing of those included on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Website: www.thewall-
usa.com
• Vietnam era POW/MIA database from the Library of Congress. Website:
http://loc.gov/collections/vietnam-era-pow-mia-database
• List of World War II casualties by state for the Navy, Marines and Coast Guard from the National
Archives. Website: www.archives.gov/research/military/ww2/navy-casualties/
• World War II Honor List of dead and missing by state for Army and Air Force from the National
Archives. Website: www.archives.gov/research/military/ww2/army-casualties/index.html
• American Battle Monuments Commission - Links to databases of American military buried on foreign
soil. Website: https://www.abmc.gov/
If you need assistance, please see a librarian. Free genealogy help is available the first Thursday of the
month, 10 a.m.-12 p.m.