90 million U.S. war records now online, free until the anniversary of D-Day on June 6
Some good news — millions of military records are now on Ancestry.com in a new collection, with access offered free until June 6. There’s a link to this new collection off the main page at Ancestry.com.
I found some of the searches a bit awkward as far as tunneling down to details, but the real treat here is that, like the images of original census records, the microfilm images these records come can also be viewed online.
Unfortunately the links from search results to images don’t necessarily take you directly to the page citing the name you searched for, leaving you with hundreds of pages of records to browse to find the ones you are looking for. But with a little work you can find things like copies of the original muster rolls, with signatures of officers, and much more.
It helps if you have some idea what you’re looking for. For example, in the subsets of Revolutionary War records, I know that the 5th Battalion of the Continental Line was formed in Chester PA.
(via wikipedia)
“The 5th Pennsylvania Regiment was raised December 9, 1775 at Chester, Pennsylvania for service with the Continental Army. The regiment would see action during the Battle of Valcour Island, Battle of Brandywine, Battle of Germantown, Battle of Monmouth and the Battle of Springfield. The regiment was furloughed January 17, 1781 at Trenton, New Jersey and disbanded on January 1, 1783.”
So the film shown here with records from the 5th should include Chester County residents: http://content.ancestry.com/Browse/list.aspx?dbid=4282&path=Pennsylvania
The 9th regiment also included some Chester residents as well as those from other counties, and apparently later was merged with the 5th. The Continental Line records should be just a small portion of what’s offered from the Revolutionary War.
Here’s part of the press info on this:
“On Thursday, Ancestry.com unveils more than 90 million U.S. war records from the first English settlement at Jamestown in 1607 through the Vietnam War’s end in 1975. The site also has the names of 3.5 million U.S. soldiers killed in action, including 2,000 who died in Iraq. … The records, which can be accessed free until the anniversary of D-Day on June 6, came from the National Archives and Records Administration and include 37 million images, draft registration cards from both world wars, military yearbooks, prisoner-of-war records from four wars, unit rosters from the Marine Corps from 1893 through 1958, and Civil War pension records, among others.”
