After putting together my Family History Binder, my husband came up with the idea to create a book about the military history of our family. Our plan is to gather military records, pictures, and stories about not only direct ancestors but also uncles and other relatives who served in the military.

I haven’t decided yet if I’ll use a binder and sheet protectors again for this project or if I’ll have it printed by Shutterfly or another company. I plan on doing more research first and then deciding on the format once I see how many and what types of records I gather.

To organize my research, I’ve started a new tree using Family Tree Maker (FTM). The individuals won’t all link together in a tree since some generations don’t have any members of the military, but I can still use the list of individuals to navigate between everyone. At first I had just made a spreadsheet to record my my info but I like that FTM allows you to save all of your images and sources so easily.

So far we’ve already gathered quite a bit of information. My husband posted yesterday in a family Facebook group asking for photos and stories, and responses have already been coming in. I also signed up for a free trial of Fold3 but haven’t had much time to sit down and research yet.

I haven’t done much in-depth military research before so this will definitely be a learning experience. While I’m working on this project, I’m not sure how much time I’ll have for blogging, but I’ll be sure to keep you all updated on my progress and share my research tips along the way.

**Update**

This turned out to be much more difficult than I thought. I ended up only finding the draft records of a few family members and nothing else beyond that. As a result, this project has been put on hold for now.