[HN Gopher] Fifty years ago, a fire ripped through the National ...
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Fifty years ago, a fire ripped through the National Personnel
Records Center
Author : pepys
Score : 109 points
Date : 2023-07-10 05:04 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| how incredible that so many resources are dedicated to preserving
| the memories and records.
| prvt wrote:
| _" There are no Accidents"_
|
| - Master Oogway
| sysop073 wrote:
| "There really are, though"
|
| - Me
| discretion22 wrote:
| The UK lost the records of around 4M (of 6.5M) 1st World War
| personnel during the London blitz in 1940. The remaining records
| are available via the UK Records Office, despite being fire
| damaged. [Edit] They are also available online via
| https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/1219/
|
| https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C14567
| asielen wrote:
| As someone who got really deep into genealogy during pandemic,
| this type of thing is all too common.
|
| In the US we lost basically or entire 1890s census due to fire.
| San Francisco lost most of its historical documents in the 1906
| earthquake and fires. The UK lost the 1931 census due to fire
| (and then didn't do one in 1941 because of the war). Millions of
| European church records have been thrown out. Often times these
| are the only record that someone existed at all.
|
| We are now in an age where things can be easily scanned and
| archived, but they're are still millions of paper records that
| only exist in paper form in a filling cabinet somewhere.
|
| That being said, genealogy today is 100x earlier than it was even
| 20 years ago. I have been able to find documents in minutes that
| took my grandparents years to find because they have been OCRd
| and are searchable online. However there is still a lot to be
| learned from old fashioned research, writing letters to and
| visiting city clerks hoping they may have interesting records
| about your ancestors.
|
| I find genealogy pretty satisfying as a hobby and I recommend it
| to anyone who likes dipping their toes into multiple disciplines.
| You can go deep in document recognition, archiving, photo
| restoration, face identification, genetics/DNA, data models
| (GEDCOM), writing, community service (lots of archiving roles are
| volunteers at small governments or libraries). It is great way to
| connect with relatives, known or unknown, and scratches the
| problem solving itch for me.
|
| It is a hobby/industry where the tools are mostly ancient and
| there is lots of room for "disruption".
| mickdeek86 wrote:
| I just spent several weeks in Germany, one of my goals was
| family history (my father was born in Dusseldorf, his father in
| Berlin), that whole side is dead now, basically. I had a _much_
| easier time in the west (my grandma 's birthplace) than in the
| east, much of which was apparently due to war damage. It also
| turns out that my naive notion of just walking into the
| national archives and putting my grimy American fingers all
| over their paper records was objectionable to the Germans. But
| at least I made contacts, the archivist basically takes a fee
| and get back to you in a few months' time.
| cm2187 wrote:
| In the same spirit, people who have boxes of old photos that
| have some historical interest either because of their age or
| persons of interest, should probably upload them on wikimedia.
| That's probably the best way to preserve them for future
| generations.
| RainbowFriends wrote:
| For the DIY folks, Webtrees is a halfway decent platform:
| https://www.webtrees.net/index.php/en/
| [deleted]
| stvltvs wrote:
| Is there a reason to prefer Webtrees over an open source
| desktop app like Gramps?
|
| https://gramps-project.org/
| RainbowFriends wrote:
| Webtrees is open source, and allows for easy sharing with
| your family through http:
| https://github.com/fisharebest/webtrees
| op00to wrote:
| My birth certificate was scanned on microfilm. I recently
| requested a copy of my birth certificate since my original was
| tattered and on its way out, and the new certificate was
| unreadable. The registrar tried three times to print a new one,
| and it turns out the microfilm was not exposed correctly and
| the originals were discarded. They created a special
| certificate that has both the microfilm image and a
| "translation" so it's actually useful.
| lqet wrote:
| In southwestern Germany, genealogy usually stops at the Thirty
| Years' War [0]. Where I come from, the population decline
| during the war was more than 66% [1]. Most church records were
| either destroyed in battle, or used as a heat source during the
| winter. Very often, people just stopped keeping birth records.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War
|
| [1]
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Bev%C3%B...
| puzzledobserver wrote:
| In our own Indian family, family history is mostly an oral
| tradition. My grandparents and their relatives tell stories of
| their own relatives, so we know of a mythical great-great-
| grandfather who was apparently a doctor-on-horseback. My own
| parents know this history, but to a lesser extent, and given
| the rise of nuclear families, I am (and I suspect the other
| relatives of my generation) even less aware of this history.
|
| In any case, written records are mostly unavailable. Our
| personal family history from the pre-1950 period is fading, and
| most of our history from before the 20th century is lost. We
| have our own stories to tell, and they'll eventually be
| forgotten too. It's sad to see older relatives grow frail,
| forget things, and die, but I've never felt a sense of
| historical loss.
|
| Maybe I'm not old enough, and I'm not sure whether it is
| appropriate to generalize to all Indian families or whether it
| is only our family which is an oddball, but I've always been
| curious about the western interest in recording genealogies.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Maybe I'm not old enough, and I'm not sure whether it is
| appropriate to generalize to all Indian families or whether
| it is only our family which is an oddball, but I've always
| been curious about the western interest in recording
| genealogies.
|
| If feels like we of European descent have all of the
| genealogical advantages. For most other folks, gleaning their
| family data seems to vary between brutal and impossible.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > In the US we lost basically or entire 1890s census due to
| fire.
|
| Yeah. That one was a killer. So much unique info that wasn't in
| other census. At the other end of the spectrum is the 1950
| census which turned out to be disappointingly uninformative.
| PakG1 wrote:
| I'm fascinated by stories of lost data. I wonder what is it that
| we're really losing? I can't tell, but there must be something. I
| lost my USB drive that had years of files on it last year. I
| don't even know what I lost at this point. Has my life changed?
| Has the meaning in my life changed? What does it mean for society
| if it doesn't mean much for individuals?
|
| Does anyone have any recommendations on stuff I can read on the
| topic?
| rhplus wrote:
| _Does anyone have any recommendations on stuff I can read on
| the topic?_
|
| Perhaps some Buddhist philosophy would help bring ease for
| letting go of past material existence?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_marks_of_existence
| fsagx wrote:
| A few years ago, when trying to get my father in law into the
| (state-run, not VA) veteran's home, we had to have records of
| his service. I was surprised that he had kept and that I could
| still find in his house all of the original paperwork from when
| he was discharged in 1954. That made everything much easier
| than it might otherwise have been. A lesson for me on keeping
| ones own data.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| My father's was one of those records.
|
| He got a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart. He's
| planted in Arlington.
|
| We have no idea how he got the two stars. He _never_ talked about
| the war.
| sandinmyjoints wrote:
| Family lore says my great uncle died in the second wave on
| Omaha Beach and was posthumously awarded a Bronze Start. And I
| have no reason to doubt this -- the people transmitting this
| information are fairly trustworthy in my experience. However,
| the medal itself has been lost. I was able to find records
| confirming his death on June 6, 1944, but a few years ago when
| my father looked into it, he found that the records that would
| document his award were destroyed in the fire. I don't know if
| we will ever be able to replace the lost award or find out more
| about his death. Makes me sad. I wish they had made copies of
| these records.
| 509engr wrote:
| There might be a bit you can do if you have a few details,
| thanks to other documents being digitized and OCR'ed.
|
| My great uncles both died in WWII and their service records
| were destroyed in this fire. I had been able to piece
| together a few details by googling their names (somewhat
| unique) with the services they were in, which lead me to
| digitized unit yearbooks and eventually other documents. For
| one of my great uncles, we found a unit report that included
| a redacted version of the silver star citation he earned.
| 13of40 wrote:
| I'm a veteran, and a couple of years ago I requested a copy of
| my service record from the US government. The set of medals
| listed in that was completely different from what it said on my
| DD214, and both were completely different from what I received
| in real life. Even if you were able to get that record, I would
| be very skeptical about using it as any kind of ground truth.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Did you inquire about correcting the information on the
| record? And would there be any point, aside from sentimental
| value, in pursuing such and dealing with the inevitable
| bureaucracy?
|
| Just sincerely curious, since as a common citizen I would
| nonetheless like for our government to keep accurate records
| (as practicality and reason allows) of the valiant people who
| served.
| dtparr wrote:
| For high level awards, there are some separate databases that
| list the recipients and citations. Have you looked at those?
| E.g. https://valor.militarytimes.com/award/5
| sandinmyjoints wrote:
| I don't think this db will help for cases where the only
| existing records were destroyed in the fire -- I don't
| believe they have independent sources, just the sources that
| everyone else has access to like government records. (Not
| 100% sure, though, maybe I missed something.)
| dtparr wrote:
| If those were the only records, you're probably correct,
| but there are sources other than the national archives that
| can be used in some cases such that I'd still do a search,
| especially for high level awards like silver stars and up.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I tried. No dice.
|
| Thanks!
|
| We had a friend of the family that is a general, looking, and
| he couldn't find anything.
|
| The army certainly has records of the award, as he's buried
| in Arlington, and they sent us new versions of the medals for
| his flag case.
|
| No records as to _why_ he got the awards, though.
| derbOac wrote:
| Good to see this getting some attention again.
|
| This affected me personally when trying to find a family member's
| military records. When I requested them I found out they were all
| gone because of that fire. It's astounding how much was lost as a
| result.
|
| I ended up having to piece together information from other
| sources. Hospital records were in a different place, safe from
| the fire, for example, and you could use that to infer certain
| things about where they were at what time, and some of the
| records had some information in notes. But if they weren't ill at
| a certain point, you would have never had that.
|
| There's still a lot that's unknown as a result of the fire.
| User23 wrote:
| I heard about this years ago from my father because it was why
| he had no service records despite being drafted.
| op00to wrote:
| I have no connection to my ancestors, that part of the family
| disappeared. I wish I could access my grandfather's WWII
| records, it would be a priceless link to the past.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I didn't know my father and tried to get his WWII medical
| records but was denied. IIRC, only he could auth their
| release and he'd been dead for 20yr.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.archives.gov/veterans
|
| https://www.archives.gov/research/military/genealogy
| op00to wrote:
| I've requested, the files were lost as of about 7 years
| ago. Thanks!
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| >the files were lost as of about 7 years ago.
|
| A lot of that going around. My wife's records were never
| archived. When a soldier separates from service, if they
| file a disability claim (at that time) their records are
| forwarded to the soldier's home VA office, instead of St.
| Louis.
|
| When my wife separated, someone forged her signature on a
| disability claim application. No one knows why. We have a
| copy of app and it clearly isn't her signature.
|
| The challenge is her records never arrived at any VA
| office she might have been associated with. We contacted
| them all. A US House rep opened an inquiry but even after
| a few years, nothing was learned. After 10 years we gave
| up.
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(page generated 2023-07-10 23:00 UTC)