1 Archives Drive - Prologue Fall 2011

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1 Archives DrivePErsonnEl rEcords ArE consolidAtEd

At nEw locAtion in st. louis

By William Seibert, Wanda Williams, and Nancy Schuster

he boxes are lined up in neat rows on met-al shelves, shel ater shel ater shel, 15 stackshigh. Look up, and you can see through the met-

al grating to the next foor, and the foors ater that,

where 14 more stacks rise above you.

Te view is impressive, even a bit scarylike stand-

ing under the Eiel ower and looking straight up.

I you lined up end to end all the boxes that will ll

those shelves, they would stretch 545 miles rom this new

building, housing the National Personnel Records Center

(NPRC) and the National Archives at St. Louis, to Dallas.

Te statistics behind them are staggering.

Tese are the personnel les o an estimated 100 mil-

lion individuals who served their country in the military

or as a civilianabout 9 billion textual, digital, and mi-

crolm pages. Some o the les date to 1821, and the larg-

est one is that o Air Force Gen. Henry Hap Arnold at

6, 044 pages. Te records are in 15 separate storage areas

that have a combined capacity o 2.3 million cubic eet.

Moving the les rom their old home to this new

state-o-the-art archival acility at the rate o 6,000

cubic eet a day will have taken 383 days when it

is complete in the all o 2012. Te building itsel,

which opened earlier this year, sits on more than 7

acres o a 29.5-acre property.

Privately owned and leased by the ederal govern-

ment or the National Archives and Records Admin-

istration (NARA), this $115 million building replac-

es two aging acilities, one o which experienced a re

in 1973 that destroyed millions o records.

Te new building is technically the home o two

NARA units. One is the NPRC, which has physical

but not legal custody o more recent permanent mil-

itary and civilian records. Te other is the Nation-

al Archives at St. Louis, which has legal custody o

older military and civilian permanent les that have

been accessioned by the National Archives.

Although it will be a while beore all the boxes arrive,

the thought o all o them lined up conjures up images

rom the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.In act, the com-

parison does not end there, because tucked inside each

o these boxes are treasures, records just as valuable as

the ones Harrison Fords Indiana Jones ound.

Tese treasures are chapters o peoples lives, some

covering a ew years, some almost a lietime.

Tey are stories o heroism, o courage that overrode

heartbreak, and o devotion to duty, whether the job

was a lie-or-death mission or routine oce work that

too oten draws little recognition. Tere are, o course,

stories unfattering to their subjects as well. And they

6 Prologue Fall 2011


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all remain important and relevant long ater they happened.

Tat they are important consider this: Te center gets nearly

5,000 requests a day or inormation rom these lesmore than

1 million a yearmaking this arguably our busiest location.

nPRC Bass a Saf

Ta Ca Ac Quckly

When Americans need to consult their military or ci-

vilian personnel records, our stamore than 700 in this

new building and 185 more in an underground annex in

nearby Illinoisare in place to respond quickly.

Tey came to the rescue o a terminally ill Korean War

veteran who was denied access to medical care because he

could not nd his copy o his discharge document, DD

Form 214. Within hours o the request, the sta produced

a Certication o Military Service by piecing together a

military record or him, using other documents stored at

the NPRC, and the veteran got his needed care.

Tey can quickly pull the le on Sgt. Alvin C. York, who

won the Medal o Honor, and retrieve the documentation

o his bravery in the ace o dangerleading an attack on a

German machine-gun nest in World War I, killing dozens

o enemy soldiers and capturing more than 100 o them.

Tey helped a university proessor nd the missing act

in his search or the complete story o how a group o A-

rican American soldiers were court-martialed in Kenya in

World War II. Tat piece o inormation opened the food-

gates or the proessor, and he is planning a book.

By consulting a 1920s ederal civilian personnel le, they

put a Missouri woman back on the right path to nding

out why her grandather disappeared mysteriously.

And they can pull the military le on the late actress Be-

atrice Arthur and show you her World War II record rom the

Marines, where the uture Maude and Golden Girl drove

trucks and worked as a typist.

Tis is what happens in this new building in St. Louis Coun-

ty, where the NPRC and the National Archives at St. Louis are

co-located. Tis is where the American people can see and use

records about themselves that the government has on le.

Since the early 1950s, the NPRC (including its predeces-

sor organizations) has been the repository or the personnel re-

cords o ormer members o the Army, Navy, Marine Corps,

Air Force, and Coast Guard as well as civilian employees o the

ederal government.

The National Personnel Records Centers new $115 million building is now open. It will hold personnel les o an estimated 100 million individuals

who served their country in the military or as a civilian. The building is a lso home or the National Archives at St. Louis, which has legal custody o

older military and civilian permanent les that have been accessioned by the National Archives.

The Center is the National Archives busiest location, receiving nearly

5,000 requests a day or inormation rom its lesmore than 1

million a year. It is the repository or the personnel records o ormer

members o the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard

as well as civilian employees o the ederal government.

Prologue 71 Archives Drive


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Tese records are important to veterans and

separated civilian employees because they doc-

ument their time in service and allow them to

qualiy or the benets the nation has promised

them. Te records are equally valuable to their

amilies and uture generations.

Archivist o the United States David S. Ferrie-

ro underscored the importance o the new acility

or both the records and those who request them.

We are tremendously excited about this

new state-o-the-art acility, Ferriero said. Te

design and planning were driven by our mis-

sion o preserving and protecting the records

housed here. Equally as important is our abil-

ity to serve the needs o those who need access

to the inormation contained in these records.

He added: We are very proud o our service

to veterans, civil servants, and their amilies and

look orward to providing them with even bet-

ter service at 1 Archives Drive.

All Persel Recrds

t Be Sgle Facly

For many years, the military and civilian per-

sonnel les were stored in separate buildingsin the St. Louis area, but it became clear that a

new acility was needed when many o the rec-

ords were reappraised as permanent holdings.

Te existing decades-old buildings did

not provide appropriate environmental con-

ditions or the storage o permanent records,

and a new unit, known as the National Ar-

chives at St. Louis, was created to maintain

the records as they are transerred into the le-

gal custody o the National Archives.

Te temporary records that were stored at

the older NPRC buildings have been relocat-

ed to the NPRC Annex in Valmeyer, Illinois,

about 40 miles southeast o St. Louis. Tis rec-

ords center was built in a ormer underground

limestone quarry in the blus high above the

Mississippi River. An additional 185 employ-

ees work in the Annex, which has the capacity

or more than 2.5 million cubic eet o records.

In 2009, construction crews broke ground in

north St. Louis County or a building to store

archived (permanent) and pre-archived records.

Tis massive construction project pumped

$435 million into the local economy and gen-

erated more than 300 jobs in the St. Louis area.

Te new building was built and is owned by the

Molasky Group o Companies, which leases it to

the General Services Administration and NARA.

Te construction has been completed, and

most employees are now working in the new

building. But the work o relocating more than

2 million cubic eet o permanent records will

continue through September 2012. During thistime, the NPRC sta will continue to provide

timely responses to all reerence requests, and e-

orts are being made to ensure that services to

veterans and other customers are carried on with

little or no delay or the duration o the move.

When the move is complete, the new a-

cility will have consolidated, or the rst

time, millions o civilian and military per-

sonnel records in a single repository.

Te new building is one o the largest in

our nationwide network o archives, eder-

al records centers, and Presidential libraries. Its

700 employees are the largest group o Nation-

al Archives personnel outside the College Park,

Maryland, building.

NARA, however, is not the only tenant in

this new building. Among the 14 other agen-

cies with oces there are the Department o

Veterans Aairs, the Federal Bureau o Inves-

tigation, the Federal Aviation Agency, the Se-

cret Service, and units o the individual mili-

tary services.

new Feaures: Srage,

Research, Publc Prgrams

Te new building meets all modern archival

standards and is certied under the Leadership in

Energy and Environment Design (LEED) pro-

gram. Archival storage bays are equipped with

particulate and ultraviolet ltration. In addition,

special paint, sealants, caulking, and the nish-

es or the shelving have been certied or min-

imal o-gassing o volatile organic compounds,which are harmul to documents over time.

At the new building, nearly all the records

storage units are 29 shelves high, compared to

only 10 to 14 shelves high at the older build-

ings. Te sta will gain access to the rst 15

shelves by using rolling ladders on the foor lev-

el. wo levels o steel catwalk will provide access

to the remaining shelves.

In 2009, construction crews broke ground in north St. Louis County or a building

to store archived (permanent) and pre-archived records. The building itsel, which

opened earlier this year, sits on more than seven acres o a 29.5-acre property.

Construction at the new building is now complete. It provides state-o-the-art

environmental protection or the records and allows storage o military and civilian

personnel les that were previously stored in separate buildings in the St. Louis area.



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Te move is also allowing the sta to un-

dertake a rearrangement o its vast holdings

to achieve greater eciency and logical order.

Military records will be organized according to

the dierent branches o service, and the civil-

ian personnel records will be shelved by agency.

Visitors will have the advantage o a much

larger public research room with more research-

er stations that accommodate laptops, scanners,

and other equipment.

More than hal o all public research room

visits are made by persons doing amily histo-

ry research. Authors, academics, and represen-

tatives o other ederal agencies also use person-

nel les or a variety o research projects. (See

the article on Jack Kerouacs military le else-

where in this issue as an example.)

Visiting researchers are encouraged to sched-

ule an appointment prior to their arrival.

Te new building also has a large multipur-

pose room equipped with videoconerencing

technology. Tese rooms can be used or train-

ing, meetings, public programs, and exhibitions.

NARAs traveling exhibition Document-

ed Rights will be on display through the endo February 2012. Te public is invited to visit

the exhibition, see the new building, and learn

about the wealth o National Archives holdings

ound both locally and around the nation.

Much Daa abu idvduals

icluded Persel Recrds

Te civilian and military personnel les oten

contain more than just the standard applications

or routine government orms. A amily histori-

an may nd a photograph, handwritten letters, or

other meaningul documents. Even the standard

orms can contain inormation about a veterans

or a ormer civil servants parents or guardians, sib-

lings, or spouse as well as other data that can help

urther a genealogical search.

Te Department o Deense and the indi-

vidual military services retain ownership o the

military personnel records when they are ini-

tially retired to NPRC.

Only limited inormation rom the les is re-

leasable to the public without the permission o

the subject o the record (or i he or she is de-

ceased, the immediate next o kin) as long as the

military service department maintains ownership.

Legal title to the military personnel records

transers to the National Archives 62 years a-

ter a veterans discharge, death in service, or re-

tirement. Ater this transer o ownership, the

records are reerred to as archival or acces-

sioned holdings. Archival records are open to

the public; researchers do not need the consent

o the veteran (or the next o kin) in order toview or obtain copies o the record.

Currently, the National Archives in St. Louis

has 270,245 cubic eet o archival military per-

sonnel les (about 56 million individual les),

and that volume will increase annually. Te

oldest holdings are Navy records that docu-

ment service ending in the 1880s, and the most

recent ones are rom 2004. (Older military rec-

ords, including those rom the Civil War and

others dating back to the Revolutionary War

are housed in the National Archives Building

in downtown Washington, D.C.)

Te archival military personnel les typically

contain inormation about parentage, date and

place o birth, physical description, citizenship

status, education, prior employment, home ad

dress at time o entry into service, marital status

assignment history (units, ships, duty stations)

military occupations and ranks, oreign service

locations, awards and decorations received, ci

tations or meritorious and valorous conduct

documentation o bad conduct and nonjudicia

punishment, and dates and character o service.

Te new acility is also the repository or nu

merous related series o records. Tey include

the Selective Service System Registration Card

and Classication Ledgers that documen

the military drat in orce between 1940 and

1975, Army General Courts Martial Case Files

(19111976), and rade Cards describing spe

cic aspects o civilian work in naval shipyards

during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Civilian personnel records are originally owned by the ederal agencies that created

them or by one o the agencies with govern-

ment-wide jurisdiction over personnel matters

the Civil Service Commission or the Oce o

Personnel Management.

During the past two years, the National Ar

chives has taken legal custody o more than

213,000 cubic eet o civilian personnel records

The sta will gain access to the rst 15 shelves by using

rolling ladders on the foor level. Two levels o steel

catwalk will provide access to the remaining shelves.

The construction is now complete, and most employees are now working in the new building while record

continue to be moved in through September 2012.



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(representing the service o millions o employ-

ees), created by more than 112 dierent eder-

al agencies between 1850 and 1951.

Tese accessioned civilian personnel les

contain valuable inormation about the per-

sonal lives and proessional careers o ormer

civil servants employed by the U.S. govern-

ment in cabinet-level departments and inde-

pendent agencies. Tey present a panorama o

individual lives ranging rom those who rode

dusty trails across an American continent asrural postal carriers to men and women who

traveled the world as Foreign Service Ocers.

Archival civilian personnel olders con-

tain inormation on parentage, date and

place o birth, physical description, citizen-

ship status, education, prior employment

and letters o reerence, home address, mar-

ital status, job series and position descrip-

tions, pay grades, employment locations,

letters o commendation, and dates o em-

ployment.

Recreag Mlary Recrds

Desryed he 1973 Fre

Te NPRC sta will be leaving the site o the

1973 re: the Page Avenue building where the

military records were stored.

Almost 40 years ago, around midnight onJuly 12, 1973, re broke out on the sixth foor

o the NPRC military records acility. Approx-

imately 22 million personnel les o ormer

members o the Army, Army Air Force, and Air

Force who served between 1912 and 1963 were

stored there.

For our days, reghters labored to bring

the re under control and extinguish it. Te re

was one o the worst losses o records in U.S.

history, destroying 80 percent o the Army re-

cords and 75 percent o the Air Force records:an estimated 16 to 18 million individual les.

Te old building was not equipped with a

sprinkler system, and the exact cause o the re

is still undetermined.

In the wake o this disastrous loss o inor-

mation, employees began to identiy and col-

lect record material rom other government

agencies that could be used to reconstruct as-

pects o an individuals service history. Tese

holdings are reerred to as Auxiliary Records,

and the National Archives at St. Louis holds

upwards o 50 dierent series o them.

Te most heavily accessed series o Auxiliary

Records are various collections o pay records.

Tese payrolls, pay vouchers, and pay rosters

provide the most concentrated items o inor-

mation on a given individual o any o the Aux-

iliary series. A single pay voucher can documentthe veterans rank, unit o assignment, date and

place o entry into service, date and place o

separation rom service, character o service or

type o discharge, and prior service, i any.

Many payrolls and rosters show the individ-

uals home address at the time o separation.

Pay records that document wartime service also

indicate whether, and how long, the veteran

served overseas.

Te records that were salvaged rom the re

sustained damage not only rom the blaze butrom the water used by the reghters. Tese

records are maintained in dedicated records

storage bays with appropriate temperature and

humidity controls.

When the records are required or reerence,

the St. Louis Preservation sta employs tech-

niques and equipment that saeguard the rec-

Visitors will have the advantage o a much larger public research room with more researcher stations that

accommodate laptops, scanners, and other equipment.

More than hal o all public research room visits are

made by persons doing amily history research.


To learn more about

Veterans personnel records, go

to www.archives.gov/veterans/.

Researching World War II records,

go to www.archives.gov/research/military/ww2/index.html.

How the U.S. Army guarded the Trans-Siberi-

an Railway in 19181920, go to www.archives.

gov/publications/prologue/2002/winter/.

Workers on the Panama Canal, go to www.

archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/summer/.


6/6

ords and ensure that the inormation can be ex-

tracted rom the documents without urther

damage or loss.

Preservation technicians spend many hours

careully removing mold rom and separating

documents that were used together as a re-

sult o the re. Despite the ragile condition

o the burned records, sta have been able to

retrieve vital data to veriy service and ensure

that veterans receive the benets to which they

are entitled.

newly opeed Recrds Seres

Fcus Wrld Wars i ad ii

A number o interesting subgroups o per-

sonnel records were recently processed and

opened to the public or the rst time.

One is a collection o personnel les o the

emale nurses enrolled in the Secretary o Wars

Army School o Nursing established in 1918.

Included are original letters written by emale

students who reveal their worries about World

War Is impact on their lives as well as their

pride in being able to do their bit in the war.

Te school was part o a larger initiative to

increase the pool o nurses available or overseas

duty during World War I. Walter Reed Gener-

al Hospital in Washington, D.C., managed the

program until it was discontinued in 1931.

Other recently opened World War Irelated

records are the individual personnel les o the

Russian Railway Service Corps. Tis organiza-

tion was made up o American railroad work-

ers, with no military experience, who were sent

to Siberia in 1917 at the request o the Provision-

al Russian government to improve the operating

conditions o the rans-Siberian Railroad.

Organized at the direction o the President, the

corps was under the general supervision o the

State Department. Te rst group o 339 railway

engineers, War Department civilian employees,

sailed or Vladivostok on November 19, 1917.

Te Russian Railway Service Corps operated

in Siberia until the spring o 1920, shortly a-

ter the overthrow o the White Russian govern-

ment in Irkutsk, when members o the corps

were evacuated rom the country along with

U.S. Army troops.

O particular interest to genealogists is a

group o records ound among the Panama Ca-

nal Companys earliest personnel les. Tese

records provide a ascinating glimpse into the

lives o the men hired to build the canal in the

rst years o the last century. Included are the

les o U.S. citizens as well as o Caribbean con-

tract workers. oday, descendants o the con-

tract employees can use these records to trace

their West Indian and Latin American ancestry.

One o the most remarkable groups o gov-

ernment employees to emerge during the

World War II was the Womens Army Service

Pilots, or WASPs. Accomplished aviators as

well as newly trained enthusiasts, these women,

more than 1,000 strong, had the responsibility

o delivering planes rom the assembly lines o

aircrat actories around the country to military

bases worldwide.

Teir individual personnel olders contain a

wealth o compelling documentation, includ-

ing photographs, applications or employ-

ment that provide detailed vital statistics and

biographical data, Aviation Cadet Qualiying

Examinations, clothing and equipment issu-

ance lists, letters o recommendation, and re-

sults o physical examinations or fying.

Tere is also correspondence with Jacque

line Cochran, who in early 1942 was autho-

rized by the Chie o Sta or Air, Gen. Hen

ry Hap Arnold, to organize and head the pro-

gram. Other letters provide insight into the ex-

periences o these intrepid women fiers.

Te personnel records at NPRC and the Na

tional Archives at St. Louis tell the stories o

Americans who served their country in un

orm, ghting wars and keeping the peace, and

as civilians, making ederal programs work o

Americans.

At the new acility at 1 Archives Drive, these

stories o the men and women who served

their country are saeguarded just as securely

as records in other NARA acilities around the

countryrecords that document and guaran

tee citizen rights, hold government ocials ac

countable, and record the national experience.

Whether nding or reconstructing docu

mentation o an individuals service or assisting

visitors in their research o a chapter in some-

ones lie, no job is too small or the St. Louis

sta o the National Archives and Records Ad

ministration.

The les are being moved rom their old home to

this new state-o-the-art archival acility at the rate

o 6,000 cubic eet a day until the move is complete

in the all o 2012. The records will be rearranged by

military service and ederal agency to achieve greater

eciency and logical order.

P


Authors

Wllam Seberserves as chie o archival operations in

St. Louis. He joined the sta o the National Archives in

1978, working rst in the NPRCs Records Reconstruction

Branch. Subsequently, he served as assistant chie in the Ai

Force Reerence Branch, senior appraisal archivist and chie

o the centers Appraisal and Disposition Section, and NPRC

preservation ocer.

Wada Wllams has been an archivist with the National Ar

chives at St. Louis since 2009. Her career with NARA began

in 2006 as a reerence archives technician and with the Nixon

Librarys Watergate tapes team. She holds an M.A. in U.S. and

Caribbean history rom Morgan State University in Baltimore

Maryland, and is an active member o the Society or Histori

ans o American Foreign Relations and the Association or the

Study o Arican American Lie and History.

nacy Schuser is a management and program analyst with

the National Archives in St. Louis. O her 34 years o edera

service, she has been with NARA or 16 years.

Documents

1 Archives Drive - Prologue Fall 2011