Military Records

Guide to locating military records for ancestry, family history, and genealogy research.

What are military records?
Military records identify millions of individuals who served in the military or who were eligible for service. You may find evidence that an ancestor served in the military in family traditions, military records, naturalization records, biographies, cemetery records, and records of veterans' organizations. More recent military records usually have more information than older records.

General Types of Military Records

 * Service Records: Service records for militia, volunteer, or regular forces document that an individual served in the military and can provide your ancestor’s unit or organization.
 * Draft, Conscription, or Selective Service Records
 * Census Records of Men Eligible for Service
 * Bounty Land Warrants: The federal government provided grants of bounty land for those who served in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and Indian wars between 1790 and 1855.
 * Pension or Veteran Records: Payments or benefits were given to retired soldiers. However, not every veteran received or applied for a pension.
 * Military Burials

What can you find in military records?
Military records provide a variety of information about an individual and could include their birthplace, age at enlistment, occupation, and names of immediate family members.
 * Service Records: Name, unit, residence, date mustered in and out, basic biographical, medical and military information. Locations transferred to throughout term of service.
 * Draft, Conscription, or Selective Service Records: Name, residence, age, occupation, marital status, birth date, birthplace, physical description, and other information.
 * 'Census Records of Men Eligible for Service: Name, age, residence
 * U.S. Bounty Land Warrants: Covers the same information as Service records as well as information pertaining to the Indian Wars.
 * Victoria, Australia, Battle to Farm Records, 1919-1935 farm land granted to soldiers. Various forms detailing the identities, location, and background of those participating in the program.
 * Pension Records: Narration of events during service, birth, marriage and death records, may include family bible pages as well as letters. Proof of marriage.
 * Military Burials: Name, years of birth and death, military unit, marriage information

United States Military Online Genealogy Records
Links to online military records for the U.S. have been collected and organized into a recommended search strategy in the Wiki article United States Military Online Genealogy Records.

Online Genealogical Records Pages
On the main page for each U.S. State page and country page, a blue button leads to a listing of online record collections.


 * Also, all the available Online Genealogy Records pages are linked at Online Genealogy Records by Location.

FamilySearch Catalog

 * Military records collected by FamilySearch, usually digitized and online, are listed in the FamilySearch catalog. Enter the name of the country in the "Place Field" and click "Search". A list of record categories will be provided. Select "Census".