Friday, January 20, 2012

Honoring Family Who Served ...

I am a planner, and this can be good, or it could drive me crazy. 

When I started adding names to my genealogy database, I didn't have a plan.    Right now I add photos and keywords to a person's file.  Was I consistent with doing this?  Nope.

So, today, as I was clipping obituary notices from the paper for a local historical society, I noticed that the deceased who served in the military had a flag added to their obituary.  A light bulb went off.  Now, I wonder, why not add a flag image, for instance, to the photo records for those who served in the military and a cross for those who joined a religious order.  Great idea, right?  I want to start gathering these images to place them into a file. Then as I go back through my database, I can add the appropriate image to the ancestoral files. 

I am not a history buff when it comes to military history I am illiterate. I Googled this but got more and more confuse.  Sure doesn't take much to confuse me!  So, I have questions for my genealogy friends.

  • Is there a specific marker for people who served in the various wars and battles?  I found ancestors who fought in the Civil War, Revolutionary War, the Battle of North Point in Maryland, WWI and WWII, Vietnam, etc. 
  • For WWI and WWII I had planned on using the American flag.  Is there another image for each war that I should use?
  • Are these markers of standard design no matter what state the person lived in?  I live in Pennsylvania and live close to the Maryland border where some of the ancestors may have lived at the time.
In the long run, I can visualize my pedigree chart with these impressive images.  In this day and age of information overload, scanning prefaces reading.  Having these images appear first on a pedigree chart would allow for seeing and appreciating our ancestors at a quick glance. 

Has anyone already done this to their database?  I would love hearing from you, if you did.  Thanks and have a great research day.

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