Searching World War I, Military Muster Rolls and Rosters, 1916-1939
Finding a solider on 1 of the 2500 'reels' is not an easy task. The rolls and rosters are not indexed by person. And a specific reel / roll name can cover a number of units in between the ones listed.
Where to start. Well first here is the link to the records. World War I, Military Muster Rolls and Rosters, 1916-1939
Here you will find the over 2500 reels/rolls for images for the various units. You will see something like this. Notice the reels/rolls are not sorted in any way.
First of all you need to know the unit your soldier was assigned to. You can then search for it. But beware the terms you might use might not be the same as what is used on the reel/roll name. And if your ancestor was in the 103rd Aero Sq, the search won't find it because it is between the 102nd and 119th Aero Sq as shown in the last line in the image above.
I got extremely frustrated with using cntl-F and trying to search so I copies the 2500 lines, did some cleaning up of the data and put it into a spreadsheet which you can access here: WWI, Military Rolls and Rosters List in Excel Not sure if you can download it directly or not but if you open up in Google Docs you can then save it. I found this spreadsheet was easier to sort, search and read than the website.
Once you have found the right film, no you have slog through the 1700 to 2100 images on the reel/roll. To access the images click the camera icon from the main list.
Since there is no index to the reel/roll, my search technique was to jump to an image somewhere in the reel/roll that I thought would be close. For example to find the 103rd Aero Sq, from the above image, I'd probably jump to about image 250... from there just go up and down until I found the the 103rd. Just for the record 103rd starts at image 146. Also another way to search quickly is in the multi-image view by looking for a image that says 'new orgn begins'.
Once you find the right organization, then it is a matter of going through page by page to find your soldier. You can speed this up a bit if you also know the rank and/or specialty. For example for Clarence Radloff, Battery B, 1st Trench Mortar Battalion, I had to search a number of terms (this was before my spreadsheet) and took a while to find the right film. Finally on the term "mortar" I found this record. Notice his unit is not mentioned but is bracketed by two other units.
Also because of the rapid growth of the Army unit names were not always
de-conflicted or were sometimes confusing. For example there is a 1st
Trench Mortar Battery, assigned to the 1st Division, and the 1st Trench
Mortar Battalion assigned to Corps Artillery. Some authors mixed these
terms up, so had to figure that out - the good thing is the Army kept them straight. Also, some units changed names. The 1st Trench Mortar Battalion was formed in late 1917 from
several batteries from the Coastal Artillery Command (C.A.C.). This
C.A.C. term remained with the unit throughout it's life. Anyway back to
Clarence.
Once in the image file we find the right unit and the soldiers are broken out by rank and specialty (image 502). In this case the officers first, 1st sergeant, mess sergeant, supply sergeant, stable sergeant, sergeants, corporals, followed by chief mechanic, cooks, mechanics, horseshoers, saddler, wagoners, buglers, private 1class, and finally privates. Knowing your soldiers specialty and rank helps reduce your search time.
For both of my soldiers of interest I was able to find them and them and learn a little bit more about them.
