The Alabama Department of Archives and History is the mecca for historical information and original documents in Alabama. There is such a wealth of information that I will be posting more deep links in the future. For now, I want to tell you about the World War I Gold Star Database found online there.
The Gold Star files are a collection of biographical data collected from the family of deceased World War I soldiers from Alabama or who had been awarded distinguished service recognition. The original files were created during the 1920's by the ADAH. Today, they have been digitalized and are online at the ADAH website.
The Gold Star files are a collection of biographical data collected from the family of deceased World War I soldiers from Alabama or who had been awarded distinguished service recognition. The original files were created during the 1920's by the ADAH. Today, they have been digitalized and are online at the ADAH website.
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| Alabama Department of Archives and History Photo by the GeneaSpy |
They have a great search page which you can enter a lot of different information. Besides the popular surname search field, there is a county search field which I find very useful for finding friends or other family members that lived near your person of interest. After you find a person of interest to you, hopefully that person has a link to the right that will take you to a letter, picture, or if your lucky, a bioform (sometimes under "other info") which is a form that was filled out by a family member.
As I browsed different names and clicked on them, I found one that struck my eye - Michael Assad Zataney of Jefferson County. I clicked on the "Other Info" and found someone filled out the "Biographical Memoranda". It is quite interesting and I will let you explore it for yourself. So, even if you didn't have any relatives that died in WWI, you might have a chance to find a friend or neighbor to your ancestor.
Happy hunting!
Sources: http://archives.state.al.us/
