Other records at the San Bruno Regional Records Service Facility include the ship passenger lists for those coming into Angel Island. However, the index for these records are in San Francisco or on microfilm from the Family History Library. You would need to locate your individual on the index before coming to the facility.

In addition your textbook covered several groupings of military records, naturalization records, and other records of interest on the family. The goal of this class, was to introduce you to the various types of military records which were explained in the textbook and to cover the methods for entering military records into the general notes field of your computer genealogy program.

Please indicate on your own Research Planner (prepared specifically for a trip to the local regional archives), the name of one or more persons on your pedigree who might have been involved in a war and which military record you would like to search: service, pension, or bounty land. By this, I mean you would list several items perhaps involving several families, on one planner, aimed at all the records available in one repository. This is another way to use a Research Planner.

Please continue and review two pages on how to enter military sources in your notes. The instructions will be followed by a listing of several military Web sites with which you might find information on your family.

MILITARY RECORDS OVERVIEW

The three categories of military-related records that are available include:

1. Pre-service records

2. Service records

3. Post-service benefit records

Pre-service records include records which formally recorded registrations or enlistments into the military including draft registration cards and militia rolls. Many individuals who show up on draft registration rolls were never actually called up to serve in the military, but the information on the cards is still very valuable to a genealogist. Prior to the Revolutionary War period they are not abundant and many have not survived, but later ones are quite abundant.

Service records cover those events which happened to the soldier during his tour of duty such as official enlistment, duty, and discharge papers as well as honors, desertion, or killed-in-action information.

Post-service benefit records include numerous records which document the soldier�s or his family�s receipt of specific benefits including pensions, bounty land, burial, soldiers� homes, and veterans� organization records.

Their Genealogical Content

Pre-service records prior to the Revolutionary War period contain mostly names of individuals, their places of enlistment, a date, and very occasionally information on the soldier's origin. Since so few other record types in this earlier time period contain a reference to an individual�s place of origin, pre-service records are considered valuable documents. They also provide the genealogist with a location for a soldier at a particular time period so that other records may be searched in that same locality.

The kind of information that may be found on a World War I draft registration card:

- The full name of the individual.

- The name of the person�s father and mother.

- The maiden name of the mother.

- The birth date of the person registering.

- The place of birth of the person registering.

- The name of another relative to contact in case of an emergency.

- The registrant�s place of employment.

- A current address for the person registering.

While millions of men registered during that military conflict, many never served, but their records help us today to determine such things as a foreign place of birth, a locality in a major city, and the maiden name of their mother.

Service records, by far, are the largest group of records found in the National Archives of this country. Because they are so voluminous, most have not been microfilmed. They include muster rolls, pay vouchers, enlistments, captivity, issuance of clothing allowance, dates of separation or discharge, and sometimes a date of death or capture. Careful researchers also note the names of other individuals in the soldier�s unit over an extended period of time. When your own soldier leaves few records, following a military companion or military leader may lead to other records. This could answer questions you have in your own ancestor�s life. Later military action service records contain information on the soldier�s conduct, honors, assignments, and even pictures.

Post-service benefit records included regular payment of money, or pensions, paid for service rendered between 1775-1916. These records may contain a treasure trove of information such as marriage licenses, children's birth certificates, letters establishing relationships, family movement information, names of family members, health and occupation of the soldier, etc.