Veterans Day reminds us that family history and national history often meet. Learn how to trace the veterans in your family, locate their service records, and preserve their stories for future...
Category - Second Lives: What Ancestors Did After the War
Second Lives: Closing Thoughts on the Veterans Who Came Home
Wrap up the Second Lives series with reflections on tracing veterans’ lives after war. Learn why postwar stories matter in family history research.
Lost to History: Veterans Who Vanished After Service
You find them in a draft card, a pension file, or a service roster—and then nothing. No census record. No marriage. No obituary. No trace. Every family historian has run into a veteran ancestor who...
Post-War Professions: Careers That Came from Military Skills
Some families have stories that begin with war but continue through decades of work that followed. A man who served in a supply battalion later owned a hardware store. A woman who drove an ambulance...
Marrying After the War: Tracing Families That Began in Peace
War has a way of pausing life. Plans are put on hold. Relationships are delayed. Young people grow older quickly. And when the fighting ends, the urge to settle down often comes fast — sometimes with...
WWI Doughboys and the 1920s: What Happened Next
The guns fell silent on November 11, 1918. But for millions of American “Doughboys” — the nickname given to U.S. infantrymen in World War I — the story didn’t end there. They returned home changed...
The Aftermath You Didn’t Expect: PTSD and Its Early Signs
For generations, families quietly wondered why a veteran ancestor drank too much, kept to themselves, startled at loud noises, or refused to talk about the war. Some were labeled “nervous,” “moody,”...
A Life Rewritten: When WWII Veterans Changed Everything
When the Second World War ended in 1945, it didn’t just bring a global conflict to a close — it launched millions of lives into motion. Soldiers, sailors, nurses, airmen, and civilians who had served...
From Soldier to Civilian: Rebuilding Life After the Revolution
When we think about Revolutionary War ancestors, we usually picture them in uniform—standing guard at a winter camp, marching along a dusty road, or writing letters home with inky quills and weary...
Discharged and Displaced: Civil War Veterans Who Moved West
When the Civil War ended in 1865, the United States was scarred but standing. The fields were silent, the guns were still, and the soldiers — Union and Confederate alike — began the long journey home...
Pension Paper Trails: Post-War Struggles and Paperwork
When the gunpowder settled and the flags were folded, Revolutionary War soldiers had to return to lives that often looked nothing like the ones they’d left behind. For many veterans, survival during...