In the Summer, 2022, issue of American Ancestors, publication of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, there was an article aimed at Memorial Day. Written by David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogists at NEHGS, the article was titled “The Final Hour: U.S. Military Gravestones.”

Lambert began the article thusly:  “Most American cemeteries include a veterans section. These lots typically feature standard white marble gravestones……which the U.S. government provides at no cost for any honorably discharged veteran…..a tradition that began about a decade after the Civil War.”

“Soldiers from earlier wars had gravestones, of course, but these were placed by families. Not all of the Civil War dead were identifiable and many wooden headboards in military lots are marked as unknown. Some Union or Confederate dead were identified based on their uniforms, buttons or insignia.”

Realizing that the wooden headboards were deteriorating, on March 3, 1873, Congress passed an appropriation of a million dollars ( nearly 28 million today) to replace the wooden headboards with more permanent marble or granite markers.

Lambert ended the article with:  “Nearly 150 years after its original appropriation, the U.S. Veterans Administration continues to assist with marking or re-marking graves of American veterans from the Revolutionary War to the present. For assistance with ordering (or replacing) a gravestone for an honorably discharged U.S. veteran, contact the veterans’ agent in the town or city of burial.’
Websites you might wish to check (Google):
*US Civil War Roll of Honor, 1861-1865*Roll of Honor: names of Soldiers who died in Defense of the American Union*US, Burial Registers for Military Posts, Camps, and Stations, 1768-1921*US Records of Headstones of Deceased Union Veterans, 1879-1903*US Headstone Applications for US Military Veterans, 1925-1949*American Battle Monuments Commission database*Interment.net*Find-A-Grave*Billion Graves

TRIVIA:  Know why Union gravestones have rounded tops and Confederate markers have pointed tops? The “wag” is that the Confederates “wanted no damn Yankees sitting on their graves.”  True? Have no idea. 

To a genealogist, nothing is more fun than struggling to read old newspapers…… in great expectation of finding bits and pieces about an ancestor’s life. Consider these; first from The Spokesman Review, 5 Nov 1921:

“A nail two inches long has been removed from the lung of a 15-months-old baby at the Deaconess hospital. The child, who is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Leo Dahlin of Nine Mile, swallowed the nail October 29, and the mother did not discover the trouble until X-rays four days later disclosed the nail. 
At the time the child choked until it was black in the face, but when Mrs. Dahlin was ready to start for town the trouble seemed to depart and the baby appeared normal. Later the lungs of the baby began filing with mucus and the mother brought the child to Dr. T.E. Hoxsey. On October 24 the child’s condition seemed alarming and an operation was decided upon. Dr. O.M. Rott, a throat specialist, assisted Dr. Hoxsey.

An incision was made in the neck through which the windpipe was cut. By inserting a powerful magnet the nail, which was two inches long, was drawn out. The parents of the baby report that it is well on the road to recovery.

POSTSCRIPT:  Our Washington Digital Archives shows a marriage for Leo Dahlin, age 21, born in Minnesota to Swedish parents, marrying Mabel Nason, age 17, born in Spokane, to New Brunswick born parents.   Then on 1 May 1941, Leo Dahlin, Jr, marries Phyllis Wade. Was Leo, Jr., the son who survived this operation???

Josh Taylor was the ZOOM presenter for the Bainbridge Genealogical Society in January, 2023. I virtually attended his talk and these are my notes:

CONTENT – ACCESS – TECHNOLOGY  — 3 points he covered

What’s out there at present? So much! One could spend hours and hours every day and  never run out of places to search.  MAYBE in the future we can ask something like SIRI, “who is my great grandfather?” and expect an answer. Not quite yet today. 

UGC – User Generated Content—– This is all and everything that WE post anywhere on the internet. It’s there “forever.” And not always safe on our own computer. In the future, we’ll have all these good things PLUS MORE.

One new exciting thing—ICR  technology —  Intelligent  Character Reading

Think how this new tech was used to index the 1950 census; no it wasn’t perfect but WOW. Think of the challenges… reading differing handwriting over the years in a record group. But this will only get better! The computer will learn how to read how to do this better and better. They do it by comparing examples with examples. And some languages-records are easier for ICR than are others. And a formulaic record group will be easier to learn.  BUT will they be 100% accurate? No. That’s where WE come in….. we will do the checking. ALSO, the “big players” will be able to utilize this (expensive) technology easier than will be small local societies.

CONSTANT INNOVATION:  Increase accessibility; mobile first; software flexibility-multiple platforms; Data storage; data access; security.  Mobile is where the future is so we must learn how to deliver content to these platforms in a way people can read/use it.

All this technology will be costly, to develop it, tech support it, user friendly software and maintenance and upgrades. These must be considered when thinking about what the future holds.

DATA TRENDS:  Central storage (Amazon, Google, etc),  Universal access, digital images,  cost effective,  permanent storage, retrieval costs.  We will have to learn HOW to deal with this overwhelming amount of data!  Today, smaller libraries/archives are being able to digitize their own records…..cost coming down. Also, the quality of the image is getting better, ie, B&W vs. color. (Color enables more damaged parts of a document to be read, vs. B&W.)

CONVERSOIN & UPGRADES:  What about websites that are not updated? How to “keep” in all aspects, these old websites full of data.  Or, how many groups have data stored in un-accessible media formats (floppies)?  Especially family-saved files on these drives!  WHAT IF Ancestry or FS go belly up? This must be considered in any discussion on data storage. WHAT if your favorite personal program doesn’t upgrade?

LEGISLATION & REGULATION:   At every level (industry, federal, state) there are different rules for privacy. A young person today is going to have a hard time getting records that we old-timers got records.  What about copyright? Digital rights? Orphan works? (Items with no known copyright data?) Who owns the right to YOUR great-grandmother’s diary? Depends on who owns it today………

 COVID:  These (any virus emergency) will create new problems……. Some libraries used that down time to scan records……… some just shut down. And now the request for info overwhelm helpers! (Some archives are going toward the museum aspect which frightens us.)

GEOGRAPHY:  If you geo-code a place it doesn’t matter what it was called then; think how this tech might tell you if an ancestor lives or lived nearby.  Pair a 1920 listing with a geo-coded place. Cool. (Today every time we take a photo on our phone, it’s geo-coded!)

ACCESS VS SEARCH:  It’s easier to scan than to index and make the material usefully available. Think of all the zillions of items that are already digitized…..photos, post cards, etc.

NEW DIGITAL ARCHIVES:  Facebook – Twitter-Linkedin – Intragram – Google+ – Instagram – Flickr – DNA How much of our genealogy have we posted to these sites? What and which should be saved?? (New baby:  good;  breakfast; worthless.) What would happen if Find-A-Grave or Flickr (or any!) decided to quit…what happens to all their images and data???

The Human Face of Big Data, PBS, 2016—— during the first day of a baby’s life, the amount of data generated by humanity is equivalent to 70 times the information held in the Lib of Congress.  So where will this info live?

CONSIDER:  How is big data applied to family history? If we could add all the data from anything and everything pertaining (example) Irish emigration or Irish families? We do this on a tiny level when we do personal research; we look at these records. But imagine if new tech could analyze all these points???!!!   Example:  All city directories, all state censuses, add 1890 vet’s schedule, vital records for time period, census for 1880 and 1900….and you could in theory recreate an 1890 census. Be 100% accurate? No, but good help for clues.  

Some of these are happening (local societies recreating 1890 census for their area) and some are in the future. (Example:  somebody analyzed 100 years of menus for NY City to see what was served where and how often.)

Tools that make family history accessible……………… these tools are getting better and better!

Education becomes critical………. To assist us to interpret and understand the materials.  (Do beginners really understand some of the facts and factoids they find????)

We need opportunities (online and in-person) to learn are vital…… societies are vital!

 Must think of what data we’re keeping today, where we’re keeping it, how we’re keeping it. And will it be available 50 years from now?

Organization and technology helps us to learn and connect.  How do we access and use it?  And who will help us understand what we found???

 “I’m excited and terrified all at once because I know there is so much opportunity out there!”

“For the types of materials we’ll be able to use and the ways we’ll access those materials.”

 “BUT NO MATTER WHAT, we will never be able (nor should we) just click  green leaf and think we’ll find/have everything there is to know right there in one place.”

According to Wikipedia, there were 425,000 German prisoners of war housed in 700 camps throughout the United States during World War II. I had no clue…….. until the fact was mentioned in a genealogy program. The map below is fuzzy but you get the idea.

After the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, the British Government requested American help with housing prisoners of war due to a housing shortage in Britain. The U.S. was asked to take 175,000, and reluctantly agreed since we were not prepared to house and care for them. As the war years slipped by, sometimes as many as 30,000 prisoners per month arrived into New York or Virginia where they were processed and distributed to camps. Some 46 of the 48 states hosted camps. 

After the war, the German prisoners were expected to go home immediately, but seeing that their treatment had been good, some 5000 Germans emigrated back to the U.S. Some stayed in other European countries. A national poll found that 74% of Americans solely blamed the German government for the war, not Germans. 

The camps in the U.S. are otherwise what the Associated Press later called an “all but forgotten part of history.” About 860 German POWs remain buried in 43 sites across the U.S. In some local communities which formerly hosted POW camps, local residents often do not know the camps ever existed. 
Washington had two camps:  Fort Lewis and Fort Lawton.  Idaho had two:  Farragut and Camp Rupert.  Oregon had two:  Camp White and Camp Warner.  Montana never had a POW camp. 

If you’d like to know more, Wikipedia has a 13-page article on German Prisoners of War in the United States.