Honoring Our Deceased Military Ancestors for Memorial Day: National Cemeteries and Monuments

On this day of remembrance, we’d like to acquaint you with a government entity that you may not be aware of but which holds burial information on thousands of our military ancestors. The American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), located in Arlington, Virginia, “maintains twenty-six permanent American military cemeteries, thirty-one federal memorials, monuments, and markers in seventeen foreign countries.” A total of more than 200,000 deceased service members are honored at ABMC sites, and you can visit in person or search on the website to see what information may be available for your ancestors.

Veterans Day and Genealogy

Happy Veterans Day! If you, your children, or other living family members have served in the military, we thank you so much for your service. If your parents, grandparents, or any other relatives in the past have served, this day commemorates them as well, and this holiday Monday, we are reminded of their commitment to our country and everything it stands for. Veterans Day, once called Armistice Day, is often confused with Memorial Day. The latter honors our fallen heroes, whereas Veterans Day was created as a way to say thank you and to honor living veterans. It is a fairly new holiday which began early in the twentieth century, when President Woodrow Wilson called on Americans to “remember the armistice,” signed on 11 November 1918, that ended World War I. His intention was to emphasize peace and to honor thousands of men who served in the war.

StLGS June Meetings and Events

We hope you were able to attend our Family History Conference in May, but if you missed it, no worries. The recordings will be available until the middle of August. We have a wonderful hybrid monthly meeting coming up next week, a German Special Interest Group meeting, and a class on Catholic church records. In addition, we have updated the StLGS website to include all of the upcoming meetings and classes for the summer. Time to open your calendars and check out the details below!

StLGS May Genealogy Meetings, Classes, and Special Events

Yes, it will eventually be warm enough to call it spring! Or, for those of you in the St. Louis area, it is quite likely that we will skip spring entirely and just jump into the hot, humid puddle we know as summer. As you enjoy the cool temperatures and abundance of rain in the Midwest (or whatever is happening in "your neck of the woods"), think about filling your leisure time with virtual learning. Our 2021 virtual schedule is expanding, as we continue to add new family history meetings, classes, and events. We are currently in the planning stages for a wonderful Summer Speaker Series, and are looking forward to new monthly meetings and classes. Read on for details!

Replacing Military Records Lost in the NPRC Fire in 1973

Friday the 13th of July was an extremely unlucky day for the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) on Page Avenue in St. Louis County. On Thursday evening, a fire broke out just after midnight, and within hours, a good part of the sixth floor was blazing. Throughout the next day, the fire appeared to be under control, but by that night, it actually had spread to parts of the fourth and fifth floors. Unfortunately, the building had no fire walls and no sprinkler system on the upper floors. With millions of paper military records inside to feed the fire, it took the whole weekend to fully extinguish the flames, which covered the mid-county area with billows of dark smoke and were visible for miles.

The sixth floor had contained twentieth-century military records of Army and Air Force personnel: about five million World War I service records, nine million World War II records, and an additional six million records from the wars in Korea and Vietnam War. Some Air Force records were stored elsewhere in the building, so they were spared.

But what if you have copies of some of those records? Is there any way you can help supplement what is left or help rebuild a ruined file? Nancy Schuster from the National Archives-St. Louis offers the following guidelines to those who may have copies of military records that might replace what was destroyed.

• NARA-St. Louis will accept photocopies of papers but NOT original documents. 
• NARA will NOT accept photographs or anything other than paper. 
• They are NOT equipped to handle digital copies nor will they take medals or other memorabilia.

Nancy says that "photocopies will be stamped 'Received from an unofficial source' and they will be kept on file to be viewed by future researchers. These documents, however, will NOT be used to verify service for any official government purpose, such as determining eligibility for veterans' benefits."

If you have copies of discharge papers, certificates, or any other relevant papers for your veteran that you would like to donate, you can mail your copies to:

The National Archives-St. Louis

Attn: Military Documents

PO Box 38757

St. Louis, MO 63138

If you have further questions, you can contact NARA-St. Louis at stl.archives@nara.gov

You can check out the genealogy page of their website here.

More information about the fire? An interesting article is available here.