People have different reasons to access someone’s military records. While the military records are open to the public, searching manually can be complicated and time-consuming. In this post, we’ve put together some reliable tools for military records search by name. You could either use a people search engine or look up records spanning the centuries with an ancestry website.
How to search military records by name
1. TruthFinder – Get public records in seconds
TruthFinder is also a powerful tool that can help you learn more about a person. It crawls millions of public records and provides you with an easy-to-read report. Simply enter a name to access vital records like birth dates, possible relatives, arrest history, address history, military records and a whole lot more.
1) Go to the official TruthFinder website. Enter a name and click SEARCH.
2) Wait patiently until TruthFinder finds a match. You could unlock the report after paying for a membership plan and see if there are available military records of the person. If so, it should look like below.
2. Spokeo – Search anyone by name
Spokeo is one of the most popular people search engines online. By entering a name, you’ll acquire a wealth of valuable information.
It allows you to dig deep about an individual (U.S. residents). Beyond just the contact (phone number or email address) and personal info such as their family, wealth data, criminal history, social media profile, you’ll also view a range of historical records that are hardly found elsewhere:
- Birth records
- Obituary records
- Marriage records
- Divorce records
- Military service records
1) Firstly go to the Spokeo search page. Enter the name/phone number/email address of the person you’re looking for and click SEARCH NOW.
2) It may take a few minutes for the results to load up. Spokeo will scan the huge database and filter every piece of relevant information for you. If you want to check out the available military records, directly navigate to the Personal section.
3. Ancestry – Trace your ancestor’s records
Ancestry is an impressive overall genealogy site. With an unparalleled collection of 15 billion U.S. records covering 400 years of American wars and conflicts, it makes it easier to explore your family history and uncover your ancestor’s military records. And this will take just two steps:
Navigate to the Ancestry search page and enter a name. It’s better to add the birth and location to narrow down the search. Now you’ll wait for the search and get the info you need.
You can even get relevant historical documents that are so enlightening and interesting, such as draft registration cards, veterans’ gravesites, soldier pension indexes, enlistment records, muster rolls.
4. MyHeritage – Discover your family history
MyHeritage works much like Ancestry. Being a well-reputed genealogy website, it gives invaluable insights into the lives of your ancestors. You’ll know whether they served in the military and learn about those heroic stories. Its extensive military database offers 683 collections (ranging from 1700 to present) and combines 67 million records from all over the world. To get started, you just visit MyHeritage’s military records search page. Then enter a name and click Search Now.
5. Take advantage of government sources
With a professional searching service, you just type in a name to find out their military records. However, if you’re not ready to pay, you can still do the search manually, but that may take some effort and require identifying info like the person’s SSN number. Below we’ll show you the best free official resources and what’s needed for a search.
- DFAS (Defense Finance and Account Service)
So if you simply want to know if someone is currently serving in the military, this verification service can help. Set up an account on this page and enter someone’s SSN number and birthdate to perform a check. - Request military records under FOIA
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) allows the public to request access to records for any federal agency, including the U.S. Military.
If you are a veteran or next-of-kin of a deceased veteran, you may now visit here to order a copy of the military records. As the general public, you should mail or fax an SF 180 form to the National Personnel Records Center (Address: 1 Archives Drive, St. Louis, MO 63138; Fax: 314-801-9195). Or you can submit a FOIA request to the appropriate branch of military service you’re seeking info from (view address).Please note that without the consent of the veteran or next-of-kin, the general public can only access limited information (see details). - National Archives
Military personal records are open to the public 62 years after they leave the military. As for those older military records, you can search from the National Archives, which is home to millions of historical and government documents.
There are various ways you can search someone’s military records, but the convenient methods usually require a fee. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment below.
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There’s no guarantee you’ll find the information you’re looking for with the tools discussed in this article. They all source their information from publicly available data sources, such as county, state and federal courts, government departments, and police records, and those sources may contain incorrect or incomplete data. It’s illegal to use these tools to make decisions about employment, admission, consumer credit, insurance, tenant screening, or any other purpose that would require FCRA compliance. Read the Fair Credit Reporting Act to learn more....About this article
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