 Good morning. You are tuning in to the National Archives Virtual Genealogy Fair. Welcome to day two, session two. This session will be brought to us from St. Louis. The session title is Military and Civilian Personnel Records, the National Archives at St. Louis. Before I do the introduction, I'd just like to remind everyone that at the end of each session, speakers will be answering questions. You can feel free to send those questions in at any time during the broadcast, live on Ustream, or you can send them in on Twitter. If the speakers do not have time to get to all of your questions, please feel free to direct those questions to Enquirer, I-N-Q-U-I-R-E at NARA.N-A-R-A dot gov. At 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time to 4 p.m., we will have a hotline open for those people who have exactly, will have certain questions really concerning some of the family research that you might be doing. And there will be archivists that will be answering those phones at that time to be able to help you. That toll free number is 1-855-309-8404. Archivist Teresa Fitzgerald and Ashley Mattingly will discuss the military and civilian personnel records maintained at the National Archives located in St. Louis. They will explain what can be found in the personnel files of former military service records, military service members, and civil servants. They will also be telling you how to request reproductions of those records and the difference between records that are open to the public and those that are not. Teresa Fitzgerald works with military personnel records and has been an archivist with the National Archives for five years. Prior to that, she worked as a data entry archivist with the Missouri Historical Society working on the Richard A. Gephart papers. Teresa has a bachelor's in history from Oklahoma State University and a master's in history with a certificate in museum studies from the University of Missouri, St. Louis. Ashley Mattingly works with civilian personnel records and she's also been with the National Archives for five years. Before joining the National Archives, she worked for a variety of museums and historical societies as a costumed interpreter, education assistant archivist, and collections management assistants. She started working for the National Archives as a preservation technician and Ashley is a certified archivist under the Academy of Certified Archivists. She has a bachelor's degree in history from Washington College, Maryland, and a master's in library and information science with a focus on archival administration from the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg. We will now turn the program over to Teresa and Ashley. Good morning. Greetings from the National Archives in St. Louis. I'm Ashley Mattingly. I'm the archivist here who works with the civilian personnel records. My colleague Teresa Fitzgerald works with the military personnel records and again we're here today to discuss our holdings as well as how to access the records. So without further ado, I give you Teresa Fitzgerald. Hello. As I said before, I work with the military personnel records and that will be my discussion in today's presentation. While we inhabit the same building in our facility in St. Louis, we actually have two separate operations. Research services at the National Archives in St. Louis and the National Personnel Records Center. The National Archives in St. Louis maintains records that are in the legal custody of the National Archives and Records Administration and these records are open to the public for research. The National Personnel Records Center maintains those records that are in the legal custody of the creating service branch or agency. These records are only open to the veteran or their next of kin for anyone the veteran gives permission to. Information from these records is available to the public under conditions specified by the creating service branch or the Freedom of Information Act. The military personnel records that are under the authority of the National Archives and Records Administration are archival records under a project called Project 62. If the veteran was discharged, deceased, or retired 62 years prior to today's date, it becomes a permanent accession to the National Archives and Records Administration and is open and accessible to the public. This is a rolling date. So today's date, September 4th, 1951, and prior is open to the public. Anything from September 5th, 1951, and after that falls under the unaccession records in the National Personnel Records Center. The unaccessioned federal records are the official military personnel files for all service branches for the veteran with a separation date of tomorrow's date, 1951, like I just said. They're only accessible to the veteran, next of kin, or third parties with permission from the veteran. Some records also include military health and medical records of discharged and deceased veterans and family members treated at military service medical facilities. There are three types of military records that I will be discussing that we hold at our facility in St. Louis, the official military personnel files that I've already discussed a little bit, the records of the persons of exceptional prominence, and auxiliary records that are normally used to reconstruct records that may have been lost in the fire. The 62-year rule only applies to the official military personnel files. They were created primarily for administrative functions and contain a lot of genealogical information such as letters and birth certificates, disciplinary actions, the discharge paper of DV 214, and performance and award and decorations received. Detailed information about the veteran's participation in battles and their military engagements is not contained within these records. This is an example of a separation from the United States Naval Service from 1945. It contains information such as the service number, where they were stationed, different remarks, sometimes awards will be on here. We have all of the military records for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. The dates that are on this slide in particular only contain the services that fall under the National Archives and Records Administration in St. Louis jurisdiction. We actually, in our building as a whole combined, contain the Army from 1912 to September 2004, the Navy, 1885 to December 1994, Air Force is 1947 to 2004, Marine Corps is 1895 to December of 1998, and the Coast Guard from 1898 to the present. The Coast Guard is still retiring records to our center here. The persons of exceptional prominence collections contain such greats as John Coltrane and Paul Newman and Elvis Presley. Additionally, records of presidents, members of Congress, and secreted heroes and celebrities are also within this collection. We are working on digitizing the persons of exceptional prominence collections, and more than 100 personnel files have been digitized and are available in CD or DVD format. If you would like to see a list of the persons of exceptional prominence, you can go to our website. It will list what records have been digitized and what records are still in paper format. Auxiliary records are often used to reconstruct official military personnel files that may have been lost in the fire of 1973. Shortly after midnight on July 12, 1973, fire was reported at the National Personnel Records Center Military Personnel Records Building. Records damage or loss include over 17 million military records from the Army and the Air Force from 1912 to 1963 and the Air Force with surnames Hubbard through Z. Here's an example of a burn record. Damage could come from fire or water. And this is a list of our non-official military personnel file archival records that are open to the public that we use to reconstruct this information. The morning reports and unit rosters were created as part of the personnel apparel functions by the military service department. These records are on microfilm and due to poor image quality, they may only be obtained by visiting our facility here in St. Louis or by hiring a researcher to come view the tapes for you. The National Archives and Records Administration has a list of researchers for hire on our website. So if it's not possible for you to come here personally, you may hire one of them. These records are used to verify events that may not be documented in the official military personnel file. The morning reports and unit rosters that are open to the public are the Army, November 1st, 1912 to 1959, and the Air Force from September 1947 to June 1966. Army morning reports and unit rosters from 1960 to 1974 are not yet open to the public. You would need to acquire permission from the military or be the veteran or next of kit. The final pay vouchers are a collection of 19 million records that provide information such as the names, service number, dates, and character of service. These are the most critical data elements to reconstruct an official military personnel file and are often used to recreate separation documents in DD218 in which the veteran may use to acquire benefits. All of the selective service records from the region for men born between April 28, 1877 to March 28, 1957 were transferred to the National Archives of St. Louis. We now maintain the World War II through Vietnam era selective service records There is a selective form that you can complete. You can find it on our website to acquire this information. Information needed is the name, date of birth, and home address at time of registration. That's how we locate the records. The Army General Court martial records for the years 1918 and 1976 were also transferred to our facility. These are used to reconstruct records that may have been lost in the fire. Additionally, they are very interesting records that contain trial transcripts, photographs, testimonies, and in some cases, physical evidence used in the case. And now I will be turning over the presentation to Miss Ashley Maniway. I'm here to discuss with you the records of former civil servants of the government and how to get their records. Like with the military, personnel records, civilian personnel records also are divided into two categories according to what is archival or open to the public and what is not yet open to the public. The civilian personnel records currently open to the public pertaining to civil servants who separated from government service prior to April of 1951. Unlike the military records, this is not a rolling date. It's April 1951. Those related to individuals who separated after April of 1951 are still in the legal custody of the agency that created it or the agency for which the individual worked. Included in the personnel record are personnel record-holdings or employees who work for the following agencies. As you can see, the government agencies that many of you have heard of before underneath these agencies are what we call sub-agencies. So in addition to the agencies on the prior slide, we also have the records of people who worked for all these sub-agencies as well. Civilian personnel records fall into two different categories. We have official personnel holders or OPS and service record cards, which we call SRCs for short. Official personnel holders contain just a wealth of information that genealogists love on applications. There's background information, information about families, addresses, education, former work experience. There's oaths of office that contain the former employee's signature, correspondence to and from the employee's appraisals about their work performance, leave and pay information, letters of recommendation or protests regarding when they were being hired and changes in work status when they were promoted or demoted. Often photographs and rarely but sometimes vital records such as birth certificates. Here are some examples of records that have been found. Some photographs and oaths of office. You can see the personal history document is a application. Service record cards are very handy because they serve as a summary of an individual's employment with a specific agency. We also have the records of people who served with the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration. We have the records of those who both served as enrollees of the Civilian Conservation Corps and those who were employed by the government to run the program. Works Progress Administration is the same. We have people who worked for the Works Progress Administration to gain relief from the government and also those who ran the program. Here are some examples of records you can find for people that served with the CCC and the WPA. On the left hand side is the first page of an individual record from an enrollees record who served with the CCC. As you can see also a wealth of genealogical information can be found from these records. This is just the first page. There's more inside of the record. On the other side there you can see some WPA forms. These records are not like other records. What you'll get with this are a list of paper that detail people's projects when they started, when they were terminated. There's some pain information and sometimes there's even an application for when they apply for relief. So a lot of genealogical background information on this application. We also have Civilian records of well-known individuals. Although these records are not called the records of persons of exceptional prominence like they are with the military. They're well-known individuals, Albert Einstein, Joseph Elliott Ness and these records are available to the public as well if the person separated from government service prior to April of 1951. So the next portion helps request records. This is the part there's a lot of different types of addresses and a lot of places where you can get information. I'm going to go through all the different methods. First of all, how to request a military personnel record or an official military personnel file. To do this, the information that we will need is the veteran's complete name as used in service, service number, branch of service, date and place of birth, dates of service, and any additional information especially if the record might have been affected by the fire. And any information that you don't know, it's okay. You can still submit it and see what we can find. The same with civilian official personnel folders. Name any alternate names especially for women. Dates of birth, they have a winning agency or agencies. Dates of employment, location of employment, and if known, social security number. Now too, where do you submit these requests? If you want to request an official military personnel file you can mail it to this address here, One Archives Drive. You can fax it to this number you see here. And what you'll use is called a standard Form 180 and that's available online for our website. If you want to request a newer or unexcessioned military record, you can go to eBetRex, the address is here and fill out the information online. But you'll have to later submit a signature page for that through mail or through fax. Or you can also if you ever have questions, call this number here at the bottom. There's more to come. To request either civilian personnel records, selective service records, course martial records or any of the other auxiliary theories, you can submit a written request to this address you see here the PO box. Or you can fax one to the number you see on the screen. Our reproduction fees If you want to obtain a copy of an official military personnel file or a civilian official personnel folder, they cost $70 for records that are over 5 pages and $25 for records that are 5 pages or less. Selective service records are $7 for the registration card and $20 for the classification ledger. You can get both for a combined total of $27. The civilian service records card are $7 per service record card. The records of persons of exceptional prominence, the military records, they cost $0.80 per page the minimum fee of $20, however. We also have the digitized records of persons of exceptional prominence and they range from $20 to $250 depending on the size of the record. Not every record is available in digital format and those that are available in digital format cannot be obtained in paper format. Additional auxiliary theories such as burial files and chaslin files are $0.80 per page with a minimum charge of $20 and Army General Special Courts Marshall records. They're at a tiered fee of either $65, $98 or $145 depending on the size of the record. Or you can visit us here in St. Louis. Our location is one archives drive. Our public hours are Tuesday through Friday, 7.30 to 3.45 central time. Contact information is below there. You can call us. You can access. Or you can email us. But appointments are required. We have some additional contact information and don't worry if you can't remember all this because these are parts of our handouts. The fee schedule as well as contact information is available as a handout. So you find different email addresses, different websites to answer your questions. And our contact information is also here below. Are there any questions? Yes, hi there. This is Andrea Matney in Washington DC. Thank you so much for your presentation. We do have several questions for you. The first one is why are some records in DC and others in St. Louis, for instance, split information on the same person? Basically, when it comes to military records, the older ones, you can think of it this way, the older ones are in DC and the newer ones are in St. Louis. And if a person served over the course of two different ores, then they'll have two separate records. Thank you. Our next question is if a soldier was KIA killed in action and left no spouse and no descendants, can I request information? Well, that would depend on the year the soldier died. If he died before the archival date in 1951, that record is open to the public and anyone can request that record. If he were deceased after the archival date in 1951, you would need to request permission from the Creating Service Agency. Thank you. Our next question is, is there a way to piece together service records that were destroyed in the 1973 fire? The auxiliary records that I mentioned earlier in the presentation are used to reconstruct official military personnel files. They will not be reconstructed exactly as they were prior to the fire, but we can piece together enough information to at least prove this service for benefits or for families that may be interested in genealogy. Thank you. And our last question, we have a person very interested in CCC records, which of course are part of the WPA and they want to know, are those records only available in St. Louis? Only available in St. Louis. The WPA and CCC operated separately from each other, although they were both relief agencies. There are additional records within the region, however that relate to those agencies. More about the administrative processes of those agencies, and you can look those records up on the online Public Access Catalog OPA. You can find those other records. However, the individual records for the CCC and those personnel records for the WPA are here in St. Louis and they have not yet been digitized. So you can write in and feel free to request them from us. Thank you for your questions and for your answers, ladies, and we'll be starting the next session on the hour, noon Eastern Standard Time.