Jennifer is no longer taking research clients but highly recommends these professionals at the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) and NARA College Park. These are the highest quality researchers at each location. Each professional will find answers where other firms will stop searching when the research gets too difficult.
Please let them know Jennifer Holik referred you.
Research Part 1 – NPRC
This is where research begins. Always. If you only rely on a discharge paper, much of the time you are chasing a wrong lead and will not have the full story. Almost all service members were in more than one unit.
Here you can access Personnel Files, Muster Rolls, Morning Reports, Payroll, WWI Burial Files, Individual Deceased Personnel Files, and more. Using these primary documents you can create a timeline of service documenting all units a service member was in for WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.
Contact Norm Richards at normrichards9@gmail.com
Research Part 2 – NARA
Once you have created a timeline of service and understand which units your service member was in, then you can pursue unit level research. There are only two professionals at NARA I recommend for this type of work.
Mike Constandy of Westmoreland Research at mjc@westmorelandresearch.org
Jonathan Webb Deiss of Soldier Source at jdeiss@soldiersource.com
Jonathan also specializes in pre-WWI military records at NARA Washington D.C. which includes Civil War, War of 1812, Revolutionary War
Book Editor and Layout for Self-Publishing
Karen Ray ray.karen7@gmail.com. Karen has worked with several of my clients on book editing, layout and self-publishing on various platforms. She specializes in military stories.