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Veteran's Day: Ancestry.com Opening its Military Records
Published 11.11.2009 | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Last month I was invited by Ancestry.com to visit their offices and learn about their genealogy company.* Since I'm from Portugal, I didn't expect them to find anything about my side of the family (they eventually did by going through their experts network-- just waiting for it to arrive). But on my husband's side of the family, with just a few names and approximated birth years, they were able to discover some key pieces of my husband's grandfather's background from which I was able to track down what part of Eastern Europe he came. The answer was found on military record, a WWII draft card.
As an aside, I've become so enthralled with the piecing together my son's family tree that I even included it on my 40 before 40 list. Researching and uncovering your family's history is like playing a video game, but in this case you reach the next playing level by discovering genealogical information, and the work becomes more involved and fun.
So, I feel compelled to share that from today until Friday, Nov 13, Ancestry.com is making its entire U.S. Military Collection at www.ancestry.com/military available for free to the public as a way to honor the millions of American military heroes past and present. Within the collection, users will be able to search 100 million names in records spanning more than three centuries (!!!) of military service.
From my personal experience, I felt that the Census data and the military information were the most helpful as far in piecing together information about my husband's family, for now.
I will warn you that Ancestry.com is quite addictive (again much like video games), but at least you'll walk away with some tangible gift to yourself.
And, without further ado, thank you to all the men and women, past and present, who serve in our military forces.
__________________________________
** I participated in a blogger trip to visit Ancestry.com. They paid for my trip, accommodations, and provided me with products.
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