{"id":574,"date":"2011-10-19T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-19T22:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/why-it-pays-to-read-the-record-collection-description\/"},"modified":"2013-07-06T18:16:24","modified_gmt":"2013-07-06T23:16:24","slug":"why-it-pays-to-read-the-record-collection-description","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/why-it-pays-to-read-the-record-collection-description\/","title":{"rendered":"Why it Pays to Read the Record Collection Description"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, I remember searching for my great-grandfather\u2019s World War II draft registration card.\u00a0 I tried every possible combination I could think of between names, places, and date of birth.\u00a0 After countless attempts, I gave up and made a note of the search in my database.<\/p>\n

Several months after this, I was working on family in Michigan and was struggling to find the WWII draft cards for these guys.\u00a0 Then it dawned on me.\u00a0 My great-grandfather was also living in Michigan at the time and I was unable to find him.\u00a0 Was this a coincidence?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I was sure it wasn\u2019t a coincidence and figured there had to be a reason, so I looked at the record description that Ancestry has for their WWII draft card collection.\u00a0 Lo and behold, Michigan was NOT a state that was included in their collection.\u00a0 Well no wonder I couldn\u2019t find these men\u2026Ancestry didn\u2019t have them!\u00a0 I made a note of this in my database and added the fact that NARA has the cards in their Chicago facility.<\/p>\n

\"\"Earlier today, I was checking to see if there were any recently added or updated collections at FamilySearch (I try to do this once a week).\u00a0 And although the WWII draft cards collection wasn\u2019t new or updated, it occurred to me, why not check to see if they have Michigan.\u00a0 Ah-ha, they do!\u00a0 And there was the draft card for my second great-grandfather, right were I expected it to be.<\/p>\n

Mind you, FamilySearch has two different collections.\u00a0 Both collection have images, but one is indexed and the other is not.\u00a0 Following is a list of the Ancestry and FamilySearch collections and what states they each cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Ancestry<\/strong><\/td>\nFamilySearch (indexed)<\/strong><\/td>\nFamilySearch (image-only)<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Alaska
\nArkansas*
\nCalifornia*
\nConnecticut
\nDelaware
\nIdaho
\nIllinois
\nIndiana*
\nMaryland
\nMassachusetts
\nNew Hampshire
\nNew Jersey
\nNew York*
\nOhio*
\nOregon
\nPennsylvania
\nPuerto Rico
\nRhode Island
\nVermont
\nVirginia
\nWashington
\nWest Virginia<\/td>\n		Arkansas
\nCalifornia
\nConnecticut
\nDelaware
\nIndiana
\nLouisiana
\nMaryland
\nMichigan
\nNevada
\nNew Jersey
\nNew York (NYC, all 5 boroughs)
\nOhio
\nOklahoma
\nPennsylvania
\nTexas
\nWest Virginia
\nWisconsin<\/td>\n		Delaware
\nIllinois
\nIndiana
\nMaryland
\nMassachusetts
\nNew Hampshire
\nNew York (NYC, all 5 boroughs)
\nOhio
\nPennsylvania
\nPuerto Rico
\nRhode Island
\nVermont
\nWest Virginia
\nWisconsin<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

*Collection incomplete for these states<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s also important to note that WWII draft registration cards were destroyed for the following states:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Alabama<\/li>\n
  • Florida<\/li>\n
  • Georgia<\/li>\n
  • Kentucky<\/li>\n
  • Mississippi<\/li>\n
  • North Carolina<\/li>\n
  • South Carolina<\/li>\n
  • Tennessee<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    The moral of the story?\u00a0 Always read the record collection description.\u00a0 At a minimum it should tell you what the collection covers, the source of the original information, and why the records were created.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A few years ago, I remember searching for my great-grandfather\u2019s World War II draft registration card.\u00a0 I tried every possible combination I could think of between names, places, and date of birth.\u00a0 After countless attempts, I gave up and made a note of the search […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,25,300],"tags":[373,381],"class_list":["post-574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to","category-genblog","category-resources-genblog","tag-tools-tech-ancestry","tag-tools-tech-familysearch","cat-27-id","cat-25-id","cat-300-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3HcLI-9g","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3312,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions\/3312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}