We indexed most data points on the cards including: date, city, state and country of birth ID number hometown, unit rank as well as enlistment and separation dates”, Gandy explained. “Not only can you research a specific individual but you can also research who enlisted from what town where men in the New York National Guard were born, or how old the average age of the men was. The museum put this information online so it can be used by people researching their family history or the history of World War II and New York’s role in it, said Jim Gandy, the assistant librarian and archivist at the museum. The digital information is now available on the museum’s website and can be downloaded and searched. Kennedy, a World War II veteran himself, and the other volunteers spent a year keying the information on the cards into Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. John Kennedy, one of the volunteers who turned the index card information into digital data. “I’ll bet you that we are the only state that has such an item on the web,” said retired Army Col. Now, thanks to a team of 15 volunteers, those records–listing names, serial number, home, and unit, and later on annotated with hand written notes on whether or not the Soldier was killed or wounded– are available online from the New York State Military Museum. When 28,969 New York National Guard Soldiers mobilized in the fall of 1940 as the United States prepared for war, clerks filled out six-by-four inch cards on each man.
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