The United States has been involved in five Colonial wars, several international wars and Indian wars, one civil war, and two "conflicts". Wars have occurred almost as regularly as the census has been taken. The records from these wars provide genealogists with the means to learn much more about veteran ancestors.
Two principal categories of military records are available, service records and records of veteran's benefits. Service records include muster rolls, rosters, correspondence, prisoner-of-war records, and hospital records. They often include a physical description, date and place of birth, and residence at the time of enlistment. The Guide to Genealogical Research in the National Archives describes a compiled military service record as follows "card abstracts from each individual soldier were placed into a jacket-envelope bearing the soldier's name, rank, and military unit. The jacket-envelope, containing one or more abstracts and, in some instances, including one or more original documents relating specifically to one soldier, is called a compiled military service record." Service records are not arranged by surname. You must know when and where in the armed forces an ancestor served and whether he was an officer or an enlisted man to search service records.
Pension and bounty land application files can serve as a solution to this problem. They are arranged alphabetically by the surname of the veteran. These records usually indicate when and where a veteran served and can aid in the retrieval of an ancestor's service records. In addition, pension records are useful because they contain information on a veteran's life after service. To be eligible for a pension a veteran had to prove military service. This proof often included evidence of name, rank, military unit, period of service, residence, birthplace, date of birth or age, postwar migration, and property owned. These files may include notarized statements from other veterans, friends or neighbors as well as deeds or any kind of document that would help approval of the application.
Additional military records of use to genealogists include rejected pension applications, disability, widow's pension applications, and bounty land applications.
Some military records for early wars and some records for Confederate soldiers will be found at a state level, often at the State Archives or State Adjutant Generals Office.
