J P Quinlan grave

Irish Doughboys

Irish Casualties of the US Armed Forces 1917-1919

Ever since I was a young boy, two old pictures that hung in our sitting room always fascinated me. I would learn that they were commemorative scrolls that were received following the death of my fathers uncle during the First World War. There were two other items, a copy of his US Army death certificate and two browning and damaged photos of a grave marker cross. I also learned that he lay in an unmarked grave in the cemetery close to his home in Mullaun townland, Cloonacool, Tubbercurry, County Sligo, Ireland.

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.