 Welcome back. This is session number four of the 2019 Virtual Genealogy Fair. It's for all skill levels and entitled Using National Archives Records to Research World War I Naval and Marine Corps Records for Genealogical Research. Our speaker is Nathaniel Patch. During his session, Mr. Patch provides you with a guide to discovering the story of your World War I sailor and marine using the records of the National Archives. Nathaniel Patch is an archivist with the U.S. National Archives at College Park and subject matter expert for U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard Records. I'm turning the stage over to Nathaniel Patch. Thank you and good afternoon. My name is Nathaniel Patch. I'm the Navy reference archivist at the National Archives in College Park. And we will be discussing today how to use U.S. Navy and Marine Corps records to describe the life and times of your sailor or marine that served during the First World War. But to begin, I just want to go over the lecture. I'm going to start with a brief history of the First World War and how the Navy and the Marine Corps participated to give you all context on what your sailor or marine was doing in Europe at the time of the war. Then we'll go into the four main steps to documenting your sailor or marine using first his official service record. And then we'll then concentrate on how to research your sailor. And then we'll go into part three, which is to research your marine. And then I want to take a moment and see about using other records that may add more context to the war at large. So at first, how the United States enters into World War I is as a result of Germany's expansion of the unrestricted submarine warfare. This infringed upon our ideas of the freedom of the sea and also the Germany's attempts to elicit help from Mexico as described in the Superman telegram. Should the United States enter the war, Germany would have liked Mexico to come on their side and keep the United States occupied. But when the war did finally start for the United States in April 1917, the United States Navy first sent a squadron of destroyers to Queenstown, Ireland. And by the end of the war, as shown on the map here, there were naval bases pockmarked all across Europe, including the Azores and the Mediterranean and even as far flung as Archangel and Vladivostok, Russia. So the Navy first, when the war was started, the Navy was relatively a small force. It had approximately 5,000 officers and about 70,000 enlisted. And through the expansion of the Navy through the Naval Reserve Act of 1916, it expanded to much larger, to about 33,000 officers and about 500,000 enlisted. And this included female reservists for the first time. So women were not prohibited from joining the Naval Reserve as a result of the Act. And so several hundred joined the Navy. And they were part of the Navy and the Marine Corps in the proper sense. They were not just volunteers, they were legitimately part of the military. And the major tasks of the United States Navy during the First World War included transportation and convoying, which means that we not only provided ships to transport cargo, supplies, troops, material, but we also organized them into large groups called convoys and we began to use destroyers and sub-chasers to escort them from the United States to England and back. This was to deter the German U-Votes from attacking and it was relatively successful. And as from the first example, a lot of our tasks was centered around anti-submarine operations. And this included not only sub-chasers and destroyers, but also the use of the aircraft for the first time in this way. So naval aviation and Marine Corps aviation expanded during this period. And then one of the other major tasks was to lay minefields. And the largest being what was called the Northern Barrage, which extended from Scotland to Norway to deter German U-Votes from using that passage to get out to the open Atlantic. And then the last major use was the naval railguns. This was used at the end of the war. The Germans had devised a similar weapon system and they were bombarding Paris and so we decided to answer in kind. And the largest guns available were those of the Navy and so they packed them onto railcars and made the railway batteries and they were five in total. For the Marine Corps, mobilization began as a war began and the Marine Corps was a relatively small force. Although they were scattered worldwide, they had approximately 700 officers and about 17,000 enlisted, but they were not in large forces. And like with the Navy, the Naval Reserve Act expanded the Marine Corps and they eventually had a total of about 3,000 officers and about 75,000 enlisted by war's end. And this included 277 female Marine reservists. As part of the expansion, the Marine Corps opened up Quantico Marine Corps base as a training facility, which then later became an officer training place. And then like with the Navy, Marine Corps aviation expanded into two major squadrons, the first aviation squadron and the first Marine Aeronautical Company. And then this is more explanation of the expansion, but of the 30,000 Marines that were sent to Europe with the American expeditionary forces, approximately 1,600 served in an additional 1,600 served in naval bases all across Europe. Of the 30,000, 11,000 were taken as casualties with 25 POWs and about 2,500 killed in action. And by comparison to other jobs that the Navy provided during the war were coastal defense. The Navy was also involved in building more ships, aircraft, ordnance production, and also expanded counterintelligence and cryptography. So with the Navy arriving in Ireland in May, the Marines were the first authorized military force to Europe from the United States. The fifth Marines mobilized in June and arrived in Europe in July. And thusly they earned the moniker first to fight. At first the fifth Marines were kind of disembodied, but by September 1917, the fourth brigade of the Second Division was formed. And the fourth brigade was strictly the Marines that served there, which included the fifth and sixth Marine regiments and the sixth machine gun battalion. And as I mentioned before, the Marine aviation also expanded, which included the first aeronautical company. This force worked primarily with the Navy aviation units in anti-submarine warfare, but the first Marine aviation squadron, which started out as a squadron side later developed into a force which consisted of four squadrons. And these squadrons fought inland with the Marines of the Second Division. And this is where the Marines began to develop their close-in air support, which has made them famous throughout the subsequent wars. So to begin, the first thing that I would suggest anybody who's going to take on this type of research to research a sailor or a Marine in World War I is to request the service record. In this slide, there's an excerpt of the Standard Form 180, which is the form that you should use to request their service record. The importance of the service record is that most of the records that I'm going to talk about are not going to be arranged by a person's name. And they're also very difficult to search a particular individual's name. So we need to have information about where your sailor was assigned to or what unit your Marine was assigned to doing this. So this way we can start to unlock the records. But the service record can also provide you information not only about assignments, but also kinship. Were there any judiciary things done to your sailor? Was he wounded? Was he taken a prisoner? So these things can start to set up your research and the items that you would need to look at. Again, stressing the point, as you read through your service record, please be aware of things like duty stations, ship assignments, travel assignments, and dates of when all these things occurred, ranks and rating, and service numbers. Because if you have a sailor or a Marine that has a common name, you may see it appear in different places and without ranks and service numbers, you may not be sure who you're looking at. So those are all the things to keep in mind. So as you start to flush out your, as you read through this service record and you begin to line up all these duty stations and assignments and things like that, you can start getting ready. So part two, now we're going to talk about how to research a sailor. Primarily the records that you're going to be using are going to be at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. as part of the Old Military and Civilian Reference Branch. And if you have further questions based on this discussion, please email archivesonereferenceatnara.gov or inquireatnara.gov. But to begin with, we're going to start with the easy fruit, the low hanging fruit, if you will. They are primarily in record groups 24 and 45. And I've divided this slide up between ship and non-ship related records. In record group 24, which is the records of the Bureau of Navigation, this is where the deck logs and the must rolls are kept. Deck logs are the record of the officer of the watch. So the day is broken up into six, four hour watches. And what goes on during that watch is recorded. Now, not everything gets in there. So this is not an accurate record of what your sailor did from morning to night. This is where the ship is, location, weather, if there was an accident, if there was an engagement, things like that. Must rolls are the record of who is assigned to a particular vessel. So this is an accounting document. So this reflects what sailors are permanently assigned to that vessel. This is not a passenger list. Although passenger lists can appear in must rolls, that's not what they're really for. And so in the must rolls, you can see when people are promoted, demoted, if they're killed, the Navy tends to just not include you anymore. So if the name drops, that means that something happened. There are reports of changes, which also indicate, and they're included with the must roll. And they will show these promotions, demotions, and changes to the permanent crew, as in folks that are being transferred to the ships, and those that are being shipped off. They're getting a different duty station. And this would also be true for the non-ship records as well, although the must rolls are more prevalent, because stations don't generally keep station logs, although there are some for the Royal One period. They're framed in the same way as the deck logs. Then in RG45, which is the records of the Naval Records and Library, there are war diaries. And these are like the World War II war diaries. These are reports to the Chief of Naval Operations dealing with the activity of that command, be it a ship, be it a shore station. And these are some examples on my left is the logbook. And this is what a cover of a deck log looks like. And on my right is the must rolls cover. And then these are examples of the war diary. And on my left is the cover of the diary for the USS Flusher. And on the right is a excerpt from that diary. Also in RG45 are several series that relate to prisoners of war, lost ships. So in entries 257 and 261 are a list of lost ships, either sunk, they disappeared, or they sunk by other means other than combat. They are arranged by the name of the ship, and they provide information about how the ship was lost and by what means. On the other side in entry 266 and 271, there is information about list of officers and enlisted that were lost, either killed in action, missing, otherwise no longer in service. And the indexes to those series are arranged alphabetically by surname. And in entry 271 are a list of prisoners of war, which are also arranged alphabetically by surname. And both series provide details as to how the sailor came to that particular situation. So in part three, we're now going to talk about how to research your marine. Now this is where things get a little complicated because there are records located in both buildings. So in record group 127, which is the records of the US Marine Corps, those records are located at the National Archives building in Washington DC. And because the fourth Marine Brigade was part of the American Expeditionary Forces, there are records contained in record group 120, the records of the American Expeditionary Forces, which are located at College Park. Technically the record group 120 is considered an army record and not a navy record. And that's why they exist out at Archives 2 instead of, or the National Archives in College Park and not in Washington DC. So again, starting off with the low hanging fruit, what's easily available in record group 127. There are unit records and they are arranged by unit and there's not too many units for the Marine Corps. As I've mentioned, there's the fourth Marine Brigade, which consists of the fifth and sixth regiments and the sixth machine gun battalion. There are other marine units that are available within the series and we'll talk about that in a little bit. And then record group 120, there's an entry that is arranged by the combat division number. So in this particular case, you would look under the second division and then under the second division records, there are breakdowns of the subordinate commands. Like the navy, the Marine Corps maintained muster roles and the muster roles are monthly, unlike with the navy, which are quarterly, and sorry for not mentioning that. And for the, under each monthly muster role, the Corps is arranged by their command. So you would look for the fifth and sixth marine regiments and then find your Marines for each month between July of 1917 through November 1918. Now for the Marine Corps muster roles, they are, they have been digitized and they are available on Ancestry.com. They are not yet available on our catalog as yet. So for the records that are in Washington, D.C., as I mentioned that there are unit records and they are part of entry 240. And so they include the fourth brigade, which includes the fifth and sixth marine regiments, but they also include the fifth brigade, which was formed and it made it over to Europe right at the very end of the war in November of 1918. And they consisted of the 11th and 13th regiments. These records also include the records about the aviation units. As additional records that might be of interest, there is the commandant's correspondence. So he's the highest ranking marine within the Marine Corps and he would have had information about the units that were being sent to Europe, what was going on in Europe, and there may be additional reporting given whatever circumstances your marine may have been. And if you're interested in the kind of equipment and supplies that your marine may have had during the time, you can also check out the quartermaster's general course minds, which is also part of R2127. On the Army side, which is at the records out in College Park, there's the records of the combat divisions. And as I previously mentioned, the second division is your primary target. Under the division, there's a section for divisional records, which are arranged by the war decimal classification system. So there may be intermediate or intermediary records in that section. But then after the divisional records, there is a section for the brigades and there's a section for the fourth brigade. Then after that will be a section for the fifth regiment and the sixth regiment and the sixth machine gun battalion. Also at College Park, since you're going to be up there for the 120 material, there is a few little odds and ends. There's in Brecker Group 47, which is the records of the Adjunct General. Under the central files section, there are files for the Marine Corps. And then there's a section on the decorations for the second division. Also in Brecker Group 117, which is the records of the American Federal Monuments Commission, there's a correspondence with officers from the second division, which includes Marine officers as well. Now part four is basically taking all this information that you're getting from the low hanging fruit. And if you want to go beyond just naming a ship and finding where the ship is going and what it's doing, if you want to put that ship or that Marine unit into a larger context of the war, was it part of a squadron, was it doing anti-submarine operations, what were they doing? Then the next part of this talk will then go into what kinds of information that you need to collect to go this way, and then what Ceres may be able to help you get a little further. So this is going a little bit beyond genealogy or the basic roots, but you might find it interesting all the same. So as you go through ship records on the deck logs, they will list not only the ship's name, but it will also give you a list of the command structure. And there may be records for each portion of the command structure. For the aviation units, you have the squadron, and then you also have the air base. So there may be records about the air base as well. So part of the way that you can also track information, particularly to your relative, is if you go through the muster rolls and he's transferring from station to station, ship to ship, you can then follow his career that way as well in addition to what information that you find within the service record. So once you've gathered all that information, the next few slides are just going to touch on different war one era records that are available. I'm not going to go into this same sort of details I did with the low hanging fruit. So one record group of use would be RG 38, which has a number of correspondence and publication files relating to World War One. And in particular to the commander of naval forces in European waters. In RG 72, which is the records of the Bureau of Aeronautics, and this is kind of strange because the Bureau of Aeronautics didn't exist during World War One. It was established later. And so as you can see from the listing of series, a lot of these records were maintained by the chief of naval operations. So when the Bureau was established in the 20s, those records were transferred from the CNO to the Bureau of Aeronautics. But if you were interested in how aviation was being applied to anti submarine operations, how they were thinking what they were developing would probably be discussed here as well. And this is one of my all time favorite record groups. This is record group 313, which is the records of naval operating forces. The reason why this record group is so interesting to me is that it's a complement to RG 38 and also RG 45, which are generally records that are sent from the field to Washington. And 38 and 45 are the records sent to the chief of naval operations, whereas the 313 material are the administrative and correspondence files of the field commanders. So if you wanted to know how a particular battle was going to go, or if they were planning on doing something, but they didn't, you can look into these records. And there are 32 entries in total. I only listed here just the highlights, the ones that I think would probably interest people, including the submarine force and cruiser and transportation forces. Since convoying was a huge importance during World War I, but also the submarine was also very important as well. But we know more about the U-boat than we do our own submarines during the war. So there's that as well. Now the Marine Corps, and be careful when you tell a Marine this, the Marines were a part of the Department of the Navy. And so as a result of that you might be able to find some Marine Corps related records in Navy records. And so here again, I've listed a number of series that may have Marine Corps related materials in a Navy record group, in particular with Marine aviation. If you have a relative or you're interested in that, the Bureau of Aeronautics would have overseen both the Navy and the Marine Corps aviation aspects. So the development of aircraft, the training of personnel, and overall application of aircraft during that period. Also in 313 are the records of naval operations in European waters, which again, these are the London office. So these are the records of Admiral Sims, who is the commander, and what he was being told by the British and how the British and the United States were coordinating to conduct the naval war. Here's some additional Marine Corps records that may be of interest for researching a Marine. These are down in the Washington, D.C. office. There's a number of registers, including registers of deserters, discharges, non-commissioned officers, and alphabetical list of Marines, of enlisted Marines covering the early period of the Marine Corps. There's also a large number of records relating to casualties, and there are lists of death records, death registers of enlisted, and in particular a register of deaths during the First World War. Out in St. Louis, which is the National Military personnel record, in addition to having the service records for the Navy and the Marine Corps during this period, they also hold the burial case files. Although it's in RG92, which is the records of the U.S. Army Corps of Master General, they include all services. So these are the records of where American personnel, Army, Navy, Marine Corps were buried. And so this too would have information relating to kinship, how the person died, where they lived before they joined the service. And you can request for these records as you request their service record with the SF-180. And then lastly, we have special media. So there are any number of records in the cartographic section, which includes graphics like maps, posters, ship plans. And then on the other side we have still photographs, which includes pictures of places, people, ships, and things of that nature. So with that, let the adventure begin, and if there are any questions. Thank you so much for your presentation, Nathaniel. A lot of really great information on there. We do have a couple questions from our online audience. Can the service record form be used from someone who served in World War II or Vietnam? Sure. You can request a service record, I think is late as 1992. But the service records for the sailors and Marines in World War I are part of the National Military Personnel Archives, which means that those records have been accessioned to the National Archives and are now part of the public record. Whereas for the Vietnam War, since they were separated after 1962, they're still part of the National Military Personnel Records Center, which makes it a Department of Defense record. And so you have to adhere to certain kinships to request the records. Thank you for clarifying that. Why would they consider American expeditionary force Marines to be among Army records? Can you explain that a little bit more? I'm not entirely sure how... Well, in terms of the records themselves, it's the records that were generated. So the American expeditionary force was under the command of a U.S. Army general, General Pershing. And so he was basically in charge of that whole force. It just happens to be that the U.S. Marine Corps got, for lack of a better term, invited to the expedition, so they were essentially under the operational control of a U.S. Army command. So in World War I, they hadn't made the delineation between U.S. infantry divisions versus U.S. Marine Corps divisions, which is what you have during the Second World War. So I hope that answers the question. Thank you. One of our viewers says, My grandfather joined the Navy during World War I. Too late, they discovered he was only 15 years old and sent him home. Several years ago, I requested his service record and was told nothing existed. Probably because he was sent home. And so therefore, he never fully enlisted. And so that's why there's not a record. Okay, another personal question. I've heard a story about my great-grandfather serving on a Navy ship during World War I that came under attack. I don't know what ship he served on. Could you briefly explain how I might get started to find out more about his experience? First thing I would do is request his service record, and that should tell you what ships he was serving on. And you would have to kind of, unfortunately at this point would be the method, is just to investigate each ship that he was assigned to during his service. And then you can use either, or use both the deck log and the war diaries. Deck logs being in RG-24 and the war diaries in RG-45. And then just try to account for each attack that those ships came under. And that should answer your question. What is an example of special operations that a Marine might have been discharged to participate in? During World War I. Well, I don't rightly know. I mean, the Marines at that time weren't really doing special operations, not in the way that the Marines today do. So they were basically an auxiliary infantry unit, if you will. And that's why they were joining up with an army unit. Now, of special operations, the first Marine squadron was asked to do special jobs because they were asked to bombard German U-boat pens. And apparently the Army Air Corps and the Royal Air Force were not very keen on doing those jobs because they are heavily defended. So they got the Marines to do it. But being discharged, well, you can be discharged for any number of reasons. You can be discharged for medical, psychological issues. Shell Shock was just becoming a thing. And affecting the troops that were along the front. We have a couple of viewers who have family members who were part of the Marine Corps and Army bands during World War I. Are there records of those bands? Of the bands itself? That I don't know. Probably what I would look towards is the combatant's correspondence and look, depending on how they're arranged, there may be a filing designation for bands. And you can find out how the bands were deployed at that time. That's basically where I would start. But again, too, I would look to see from the service record if there were delineations between different bands. I would say if there was a regimental band versus, well, they didn't have divisional bands. But if there was a special organization band, let's say. And then that might help you to look in different places. Now if the bands were sent overseas, again, combatant's correspondence. And you might also check the flag files for the commander naval forces in European waters. Because obviously the band was playing for somebody and they might have been playing for him. If a pilot was shot down and buried in Europe, would those burial records still be in St. Louis? Yes. Okay. And related to that, is there a list somewhere that shows what type of military records are kept at which archival center? Well, there's the catalog that would help. And hopefully this presentation will help to delineate that as well. So essentially the main division is that for World War I era, records that are generated by the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps are going to be in the Washington, D.C. area at the National Archives Building. While U.S. Army records from the same period are going to be at the College Park place or archives. But in terms of personnel records, individual personnel records are going to be in St. Louis. And anything that are personnel related, like the burial case files, are going to be also located at St. Louis. All right. Our final question is a little bit more lighthearted. Can you keep track of all of these abbreviations, numbers and letters? All right. Thank you so much, Nathaniel. For our viewers, if the presenter did not get to your question, please send an email to inquire at narra.gov. Videos and handouts will remain available after the event from this YouTube page and from the FAIRS webpage.