IIGS™ Newsletter - July/August 1999
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IIGS™ Newsletter - July/August 1999
Among the more pervasive Internet genealogy hoaxes (or Urban Legends) are the ones which claim one of the following:Pension Files Found
Over a hundred boxes of pension records that date back to the Revolutionary War, War of 1812 and the Seminole War were recently found at the National Archives. None of these have ever been indexed or microfilmed. They are arranged by account number and are being published in American Genealogy Magazine by Datatrace System, PO Box 1587, Stephenville, Texas.
Veterans Records Discovered
Some 10 million duplicates of 20th century military records thought to have been destroyed in the 1973 fire have been found by the Veterans Administration. If you have been told the records you need were burned in that fire, you may want to write again to: National Personnel Records, GSA 9700 Page Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri.
One of the members of IIGS endeavored to find out from official sources whether there is any truth to the above.
A spokesperson for the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC), Military Records facility (MPR) located in St. Louis, Missouri (a regional division of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) responded with this information:
The information concerning lost/recovered records is not accurate. No military personnel records or medical records presumed to be lost or destroyed have been found or recovered. Unfortunately that unsubstantiated rumor has been circulating since the mid 1980s, but is totally false. The basis for the rumor is as follows:The "10 million lost records found" mentioned in an article are actually records from the Surgeon General's Office (SGO) Hospital Admission Card file that were identified and transferred from the National Research Council to the National Archives and Records Administration in 1988. The source records existed on computer files which were not readable or usable in their original format and required extensive re-formatting. We, the National Personnel Records Center, were able to salvage 7.8 million record entries from the source file. These records have been in use at NPRC since that time to assist us in answering requests from the Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA) and inquiries from veterans themselves and their authorized representatives.
The SGO records are not specific medical documents; they are abstracted information obtained from hospital admission cards sequenced by serial number (they contain NO names). The records were created using data sampling techniques for statistical purposes. The listings are not complete nor comprehensive and many admissions were skipped during the sampling process. The subjects of the entries were active duty Army and Army Air Corps personnel in service between 1942 and 1945; and Army (95 percent-plus), Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and military cadet personnel (totaling 5 percent-plus) who were in service between 1950 and 1954.
Information concerning the SGO files is available on the Internet at:
NPRC http://www.nara.gov/regional/stlouis.html
MPR http://www.nara.gov/regional/mpr.html
We realize that people who are not aware of the facts of this situation are given false hope when the RUMOR that lost records, which will assist veterans have been "found", reaches them. Sadly, it is not the case. We have received inquiries and letters concerning this since 1988, but we have been unable to squelch the story. It seems to appear every so often in magazines, on TV, even through information sources of other federal agencies and military veterans' organizations.
Check out these and other Urban Legends at:
http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html
http://www.bosbbb.org/warning/advcraig
http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/blfebrez.htm
http://platon.teipir.gr/eegtti/eeg_81.html