Finding Your
Family History
By Robert Cox MVHA Vice President
Military records often provide the most detailed information about our American ancestors who served in the Armed Forces . This is particularly true for those who applied for wartime service pensions . The applications for these required a lot of personal information and life history .
The most basic records can be found on www . familysearch . org for free . These include draft and registration records , and applications for grave headstones , which the USA government often provided to veterans for free . First check these records to determine in which military con�licts your ancestor participated . Often these records will provide your ancestor ’ s military unit . Knowing that , you can then �ind where the unit was at various times during the war and the battles in which it participated .
More detailed personal military records can be obtained online at www . archives . gov / research / military . You will typically �ill out a form and pay a fee for an electronic or paper copy . My great-grandfather Perry Cox ’ s Civil War pension application is my best source of information about him . It included his birthplace , physical description at the time of enlistment , service record , list of places he lived after his military service , the names of his wife and children , post-war occupation and addresses , and the circumstances under which he was wounded during the war . The documents were notarized and included a list of witnesses and his length of acquaintance with them . Often , we can learn new things about our ancestors by researching the lives of the people who knew them well .
Military pensions were an important source of income for veterans , particularly in the years before Social Security was enacted . Pensions were not only provided for veterans , but also for their spouses after the veteran ’ s death . I ran across one disturbingly enlightening collection of letters while researching the pension application for a distant cousin of my grandmother Cox . This Civil War veteran left his wife and children in Pennsylvania and married another woman in Ohio , without securing a divorce from his �irst wife . After his death , both women applied for his pension . Each woman expressed very pointed opinions about the other in follow-up documentation .
Mtn . View Family History Fun Fact !
Former Mayor John Inks ’ s �ifth great-grandfather , Thomas Inks , immigrated from Minsterley , England to Fayette County , Pennsylvania in the early 1700 ’ s . Thomas served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War . For his service , he was awarded a plot of land , on which he established a tavern . John was the eighth generation in a line of Inks men who lived in Fayette County .
John ’ s father Matt broke with that tradition by relocating the family to Florida when John was a boy . The trip to Florida was John ’ s �irst ride in an airplane . John commented , “ I remember my father picking us up at the Miami airport . Seeing all those airliners , especially the Lockheed triple tail Constellations at the airport sparked my lifelong interest in aviation . But , I didn ’ t become a pilot myself until 2005 �lying Cessnas out of Palo Alto .”
The tavern in Minsterley , England which may have inspired Thomas Inks to open his business in America .
The Inks boys on the family stoop . John is the oldest ( and tallest ).
In my next column , I will cover immigration documents .
John Inks begins his training as a Cessna pilot in 2005 . 5