World War I Soldiers File

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Summary

Title:
World War I Soldiers File
Creators:
California Historical Survey Commission
Language:
English.
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], World War I Soldiers File, California State Library.

Background

Scope and content:

Newspaper clippings.

Biographical / historical:

In 1918, the California State Council of Defense (first created in 1916) formed the War History Committee for the purpose of assembling the records of the war and preserving all material of historical value relating to California's part in that War. The actual direction of the work of the Committee was given to the Historical Survey Commission (created in 1915) under the immediate supervision of Dr. Owen C. Coy. Under this director, a county war history committee was to be created in each of the 58 counties. Each committee was expected to prepare reports dealing with local war activities and to gather and compile statistical information on those activities. They were to collect newspaper clippings, war programs, war addresses, photographs, manuscripts, documents, posters, and other fleeting war history material.

Beginning in 1918, the Committee forwarded requests and a preprinted form (California Honor Roll) to the various counties to gather biographical information on soldiers. The soldiers' record cards were 3x5" cards separated into Casualty men and Non-casualty men. A Casualty card would contain the soldier's name, date & page where listed in Official U.S. Bulletin, name of relative, a code indicating type of death. A Non-casualty card would begin with a code in upper left corner signifying type of card, soldier's name, location of his biographical file, indication of a biographical card (California Honor Roll) and/or photograph. These cards, in addition to photographs and newspaper clippings from local papers were sent by the counties to the Committee.

Physical description:
18 boxes

About this collection guide

Collection Guide Author:
Processed by The California State Library staff; machine-readable finding aid created by Xiuzhi Zhou
Date Prepared:
© 1999
Date Encoded:
Machine-readable finding aid derived from WordPerfect.

Access and use

Restrictions:

Unrestricted.

Terms of access:

Please credit California State Library.

Copyright has not been assigned to California State Library. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing. Permission for publication is given on behalf of California State Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], World War I Soldiers File, California State Library.

Location of this collection:
900 N Street, Room 200, P.O. Box 942837
Sacramento, CA 94237-0001, US
Contact:
(916) 654-0176
cslcal@library.ca.gov
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