What Ship Did Grandpa Serve On? How to Find Your Loved One's Military Records.

By Joseph Miechle 

Hampton Roads Naval Museum Educator

Your family military records may yield interesting results.

One of the most commonly asked questions at the Hampton Roads Naval Museum is, "How do I find out what ship my family member served on?" This is a wonderful question and one we would be happy to help you with. Since literally millions of U.S. Navy veterans are alive in the United States and millions more have passed away, this is generally a question we cannot quickly answer for you. But fear not! We can point you in the right direction.

If your family member is still alive they should be your first point of contact. Many parents and grandparents that served in the armed forces would be more than happy to share their treasured stories with you, and would likely have much more to tell than a written record could ever provide you. The search gets a bit trickier if your family member has passed away, but it is not unobtainable. Your first action should be to locate some proof of death since in order to request a loved one’s records you must prove they are no longer living. Good examples are an obituary in your local newspaper or a death certificate from a funeral home (if available).

USN Signal School, Norfolk, Virginia, 1918

Your next step is to request the records from the National Archives in St. Louis. They have a well written set of instructions for you to follow at the following web address:

http://www.archives.gov/st-louis/military-personnel/index.html

You should generally be able to find your family member's records from the link above if they left the service between 1912 and 1953. For earlier records there is a separate link here:

http://www.archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records/pre-ww-1-records.html

You may be able to find your family member's records back to the Revolutionary War based on pension requests. Be forewarned though, there was a fire at the National Archives building in 1973 that destroyed a great number of service records. You may hit a dead end, but again fear not, as we offer another avenue of approach.

Basic Training photograph of author's grandfather, Ft. Lewis, Washington, circa 1950.

You may want to check the records of some of the National Veterans Service Organizations such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), American Legion, and Disabled American Veterans. You may even try the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) for Civil War records. These Veteran Service Organizations (VSOs), usually keep a record of membership at the post or local level. You may have to check with several posts in both your family member’s hometown as well as the town or city they resided in when they passed away. Phone numbers and contact information for these VSOs can be found online with a quick Google search. You might also try a local historical society. They often have genealogists on staff or a genealogy club with members who can assist you in your search among the town archives, library and newspapers.

Once you have obtained your family member's service records and know what ship they served on, you can use the internet to your advantage. The U.S. Navy has uploaded brief records of many ships to Wikipedia and also has the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships online at the Naval History and Heritage Command’s website (www.history.navy.mil). You may also try sites such as NavSource (www.navsource.org) for photographs of the ship and links to organizations that represent them. Feel free to visit the Hampton Roads Naval Museum with your new information and we would be pleased to assist you in obtaining additional information. Happy hunting!

Pulp Fiction in "Civil War News" Trading Cards

In 1962, during the Centennial of the Civil War, the Topps Trading Card company released a set of 88 cards with graphic depictions (very loosely) based on the war.  The set was officially titled "Civil War" but because the back of each card looked like an old newspaper with the heading "Civil War News," this latter name stuck.  Aimed at young boys, the images of battle were done in a very vivid and overtly gory way, sensationalizing the war. Images of stabbing, point blank cannon fire, and blood were fairly commonplace.  In this manner it was a throwback to the popular "Horrors of War" series in 1938 which focused on recent conflicts of that time (Spanish Civil War, Ethiopian War, and Sino-Japanese War).  

Topps enlisted pulp artist Norm Saunders (who also did Mars Attacks) to help with the images, while Topps creative editor Len Brown did the text. In an interview many years afterward, Brown describes the battle cards as "phony."  The disregard for historical accuracy is readily visible when looking at them as many details in the text or pictures are clearly fabrications.  Brown affirmed this when he spoke on making the cards: "We'd dream up a scene, some gory scene...from there it was dreamland...I'm sure kids thought this was the real history.  And we had teachers writing us, thanking us for teaching kids history." 

Of interest to this blog are a few cards that portray naval battles. There are three images that depict the Battle of Hampton Roads, which is more than any other battle in the series, even Gettysburg.  Whether this is owing to the importance of the battle or because the cards are earlier in the set is unclear. 

Card #7 from the series shows USS Cumberland being attacked by CSS Virginia. 121 Cumberland sailors died on March 8, 1862. 

Card #8 inaccurately shows the attack on the USS Congress (Virginia did not ram it). In an uncommon nod to accuracy, the artist placed what appears to be CSS Patrick Henry in the background. 

Card #10- Note the inaccuracies such as the gaping hole torn in the armor and giant gun port. 

Other naval battles are also displayed in pulp fashion.  One humorous example is the CSS Hunley's attack on USS Housatonic seen below (card #59).  The Southern Cross is prominently displayed on the side of the vessel, visible underwater to the viewer.  The text on the back of the card claims that this attack happened in the afternoon (instead of night), and that the submarine rammed the ship when it could not fire its (non-existent) guns.  Truly Brown was not lying when he claimed to be in "dreamland" while developing this trading card set.   

Another example of ignoring facts for the sake of a good picture (and sales) is card #69, showing the aftermath of the battle between USS Kearsarge and CSS Alabama.  Sharks are seen attacking the Alabama's crew as they flounder in the water.  In actuality most survivors were picked up by the Kearsarge, although Capt. Semmes and some other officers escaped on the British yacht Deerhound.  Any that were lost in the water died from drowning, not sharks. 

In contrast the card (#76) depicting Adm. Farragut's USS Hartford fighting CSS Tennessee at Mobile Bay seems fairly tame and loosely based on previous paintings ("August Morning with Farragut" by William Heysham Overend). 

When examining this series, it is important to remember that these cards were ultimately designed to tap into the market created by the Centennial events.  Yet for all of their countless ahistorical shortcomings, the cards probably helped spark interest in the Civil War among the young male segment of the population during the 1960's.  Regarded as collector's items these days, the "Civil War News" series is a very interesting piece of cultural history. 

(Excerpt of Brown's interview can be found in Baetens, Jan. "Civil War News: How Pop Culture Rewrites History." Journal of American Culture, (1997), 1-6.)

A Thirteen-Star Flag from the Civil War

By Joseph Judge

Hampton Roads Naval Museum Curator

The museum always tries to highlight a unique artifact during the annual CPO Heritage Days event in August. This year we displayed one of the highlights of the collection, recently transferred to HRNM from the (now closed) Supply Corps Museum.

The artifact is a 13-star American flag, made during the Civil War. Gunner’s Mate James Smith made this flag while on board USS Hartford, Admiral Farragut’s flagship. Of course, the American flag carried 33 stars at the beginning of the war, and later more as Kansas and West Virginia joined the Union. But the impulse to celebrate the Revolutionary generation was strong during the crisis years of the Civil War. Both North and South looked to America’s eighteenth century for intellectual and emotional justification for the actions of the 1860s.

As for James Smith, little is known about the Sailor who decided to celebrate American history during America’s greatest crisis. A US Navy gunner’s mate named James Smith was at the Battle of Mobile Bay – but aboard USS Richmond, where he earned the Medal of Honor. The citation reads (in part): “As captain of a gun on board the U.S.S. Richmond … Despite damage to his ship and the loss of several men on board as enemy fire raked her decks, Smith fought his gun with skill and courage throughout the prolonged battle which resulted in the surrender of the rebel ram Tennessee and in the successful attacks carried out on Fort Morgan.”

It would be tempting, but unfortunately unjustified, to claim that the USS Richmond’s James Smith is the maker of the USS Hartford 13-star flag. A future, and very thorough, archival search will be required to establish a real connection, if one exists.

We do know how the flag came into the Navy’s collection. It was donated in 1991 by the former Chief of the Navy’s Supply Corps, Rear Admiral Daniel McKinnon, Jr. Admiral McKinnon was described by “The Supply Line,” a Navy newsletter of the day, as “a history buff” who “had been holding on to some treasures.” 

1876-The Fleet Mobilizes at Norfolk Navy Yard

This is a Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper engraving from February 1876, showing the North Atlantic Squadron deploying from the Norfolk Navy Yard for Winter exercises in Port Royal, South Carolina. Ships in the engraving include the historic steam sloop USS Hartford, the rebuilt steam sloop-of-war USS Marion, and the new iron-hulled steam gunboat USS Huron. There are two monitor-type warships and they are believed to be USS Passaic and Lehigh. In the written portion of the paper, the editors were more interested in the historic ships that the Navy laid up at the Yard, then the active ships. This included the sail frigates Savannah, St. Lawrence, and Macedonian. The colorized engraving is currently on display in the museum's 1907 exhibit.

The year Frank Leslie's produced this image was the lowest of low points in the history of the Navy. Even with the embarrassment of not being able to mobilize a squadron to respond to the Virginius incident in Cuba, Congress advised the Navy to cut its personnel by ten percent and continued to cut funding in new ship construction and technologies. It was also the year that Navy inspectors found several irregularities with the Navy Yard's contracts and the way it conduct business with the private sector.

Nonetheless, the Navy still had a job to do and Hampton Roads and Norfolk Naval Yard were the center of most of the Navy's activities in the Atlantic Ocean. Until the construction of NOB Hampton Roads, the Navy Yards served as ad hoc naval stations and all ships of the North Atlantic Squadron spent at least two months in the region, before heading out to a foreign station. The squadron of ships depicted in this image provide proof of this. En route to Port Royal, the Navy ordered most of the ships to skip Port Royal and steam to trouble spots in Haiti and Mexico.