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Guide to using Ancestry Library: Military Records

Types of military records available

The U.S. Military Collection includes millions of U.S. military records, covering almost 40 years of American wars and conflicts from the American Revolution through Vietnam. It has everything from draft registration cards, veterans' gravesites, soldier pension indexes, enlistment records, muster rolls and much more. 

The collection features military records from the Revolutionary War, Civil War, World Wars I and II, as well as more recent conflicts like the Korean War and Vietnam War. It even features military records from lesser known conflicts like the Spanish American War and even the War of 1812. 

You have the option of searching for your ancestor by their name to locate any military records pertaining to them, or by a specific category (i.e. draft records, pension records, awards and decorations of honor, etc) or from a specific data collection (i.e. U.S. Marine Corps Muster Rolls, 1798-1958). 

Sample records available when searching by name

 

Search results for military records

Casualty records will allow you to learn when and where your ancestor died while serving in the military, if they were first interred abroad in a military cemetery (i.e. where they fell in battle), and if they were considered MIA (missing in action) and never had their remains found. 

Corporal Hauge's body was never found when he fell in battle during the Battle of Okinawa during World War II. So he is memorialized at Hawaii's Honolulu Memorial which is located within the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. His name is one of over 18,000 names inscribed on the Courts of the Missing there of World War II American servicemen who fought in the Pacific and whose bodies were never found.