Genealogists be warned: Many family military stories aren’t factual

In his book “Sustainable Genealogy: Separating Fact from Fiction in Family Legends,” Richard Hite devotes a chapter to the military service of our ancestors.

He warns that, many times, the truth is stretched to make an ancestor’s career sound more impressive. Sometimes, in family lore, the person has been given a higher rank or is said to have served with more important people, and so forth. If you have an ancestor with a military record, take the time to look up the facts about his military career. These can be found at Ancestry.com and Fold3.com. Both have the service records for most American wars, at least up to modern times. In recent years, members of the armed forces get a DD Form 214 when they leave the military and it lists all their ranks, any awards, medals and commendations. In pre-1900 conflicts, you need to rely on the online service records.

Men who served during the American Revolution often had short tours of duty and served several different times. One of the best ways to understand military service during that war is to read the firsthand accounts in their pensions. Those for Southern soldiers have been transcribed at https://revwarapps.org. Nothing is more real than reading these documents. So, before you go on and on about your ancestor’s military record, check out the facts.