American WWI Burial Cards

Weldon Hoppe visited the World War I battlefields and cemeteries of France in 2018 to remember and honor the "Boys of Farnam" (Nebraska) who fought for the cause. Howard Nickerson and Leonard Banks were two of the "boys" that gave their lives in the Meuse-Argonne. Hoppe visited the grave of Nickerson in Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery on the 100th anniversary of Nickerson's death. With the limited information that was readily available to the casual researcher at the time though, Hoppe was unable to find the location of Nickerson's death and initial burial. Soon after that trip, the U.S. National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) released two digitized collections of documents that greatly improved access to some very useful information related to the deaths and burials of the World War I soldiers who died during the war. One of those collections, the Card Register of Burials of Deceased American Soldiers is the subject of this project. While making the documents accessible to the public without having to visit the physical archives is very helpful, the enormity of the collection still makes it hard to locate cards of soldiers who may be connected to each other by the unit they served in or the location of their initial burial. Various methods of capturing this data into a relational database were investigated by Hoppe and Zooniverse was the method he selected. During his quest to conquer this hurdle to make use of all available data, he became acquainted with other like-minded individuals on the Facebook group Meuse-Argonne.com. Other members of the research team have been recruited from this group.

The second collection released by NARA, mentioned above, was the Initial Burial Plats for World War I American Soldiers. This is a collection of four plat books consisting of nearly 1,300 survey maps that detail the locations of the initial burials of twenty thousand U.S. soldiers. After accessing this collection, Hoppe found that there was no "system" to the books and adjacent maps in a book could be for locations far apart from each other. Without viewing each map individually it was impossible to find the maps that were adjacent to each other. However, each map is based on an I.P., or Initial Point, defined by a coordinate system. Hoppe catalogued the information on all the maps, including the I.P. and created a GIS map of the plats to make it easier for other researchers to make use of these invaluable plat maps. This GIS map is currently available at http://bit.ly/AEFMAP

Andrew Capets lives in North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania and is curator of the local history website called traffordhistory.org. He was involved in establishing the Trafford Historical Society and is co-author of the book "Images of America - Trafford" published in 2017 by Arcadia Publishing. His book "Good War, Great Men" was endorsed as an official project of the World War One Centennial Commission.

Susi Adler lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is an independent scholar and researcher focusing on WWI with a special interest in Fort Snelling, Meuse-Argonne Offensive, and Medical Corps. She is an active member of the Minnesota WW1 Centennial Committee and is on the board of directors of Fort Snelling Historical Society and Friends of Fort Snelling.

On a visit to the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in 2014, Susi was struck by the beauty and calm of the cemetery containing 14,000 grave markers and 1,000 names on the Tablets of the Missing. She wondered if anyone remembered the 466 Minnesotans who were buried over 4,000 miles from home. She decided she would. That started the mission to create a database of Minnesotans who died in service in WWI and write a vignette with photo (when possible) for each of the approximately 3,700 Gold Star Minnesotans. After joking that this would be a “10-year” project, she has come to realize that may be optimistic. Never-the-less, she is undaunted in completing the task.

Susi is very pleased to be a part of this Zooniverse project to document the information on the WWI Burial Cards of American Soldiers. The details on these cards have been useful in adding depth to the story of the Minnesotans. The work product of this project will save her a lot of time tracking burial locations, cause of death, and next of kin. It may even keep her “10-year” project on track for completion.

Susi’s work in progress can be found on the Facebook page Minnesotans Remembered. The completed project will be available to the public at the Minnesota Military Museum, The ABMC cemeteries, and locally in Minnesota.