The story of John's wartime service and how he came to be
buried in rural Sligo is told here.
The search for his wartime story led me to learn of the Irish
dead returned for burial on the steamers, Orlock Head and
Millwater, in 1921 and 1922. That then set in motion
this quest to try to identify as many as possible Irish men
and women who died with with US Armed Forces during
1917-1919. The results of that can be seen below in two
formats:
A Google Map which plots the birth place or residence of the
casualties and a searchable table of the women and men.
Name: the persons name including spelling
variations between Irish and American records.
US State of Residence: The state from which the
person joined the services. This would seem to be a
simple thing to record but this can vary from being the state
the person enlisted from to apparently being the state the
persons next of kin came from. The final state decided
upon seems to govern where the person’s service file details
might be found archived.
Irish Birth County/Place of Birth: The county in
Ireland from where the person originated or grew up.
Dates of birth and place of birth: A real mixed
bag, this has ended up endeavouring to match American records
to a recorded Irish birth in the GRO registers from
irishgenealogy.ie. But, birth dates can vary by between
one and six years, and can be completely different on each
record. The dates are indicated by a code in brackets:
(VMI) Veterans Master Index
(MGR) Massachusetts Gold Star Record
(DRC) Draft Registration card
(SSC) Statement of service card
(Nat) Naturalisation record
And there are a number of others
The place of birth in most cases is a townland or street
recorded on their birth register entry.
Personnel Number: The number assigned to the person
when in service. Army officers did not get an assigned
number and Army numbers were only issued in the spring of
1918.
Rank: The persons military rank at the time
of their death. This can vary between records.
Residence: An address that they gave to the
military, and typically on their draft registration card
and/or statement of service card.
Unit at death: The military unit they were
serving with at the time of their death
Burial Details: The place of burial where found.
Place of death: Where known, the location where death
took place, for most of the battle casualties this is listed
simply as France.
Notes: This field lists the names of those who
were official next of kin, from various sources and where
possible, the persons parents names. I have also
generally been able to pick out the persons shipping arrival
from the various New York, Boston, Pennsylvania and other port
arrivals on genealogy websites. Sometimes I have
recorded 1901 and 1911 Irish census, and various American
census details where these added to the trail of evidence.
Secondly, a sortable and searchable table below of the women
and men's details. Clicking on any header will sort that
coloumn and the search box on upper left will find any string
of letters or numbers entered.