Posted by Web Operations on September 23, 2011 in Who Do You Think You Are?

In this week’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? Ashley Judd learned how her ancestors fought for their beliefs.

Ashley used family trees and records from England to discover she descends from a famous Mayflower passenger who stood up for religious freedom.

She searched military records on the Ancestry website (shown below) to find a great-great-great- grandfather who lost a leg and was imprisoned twice while fighting in the Civil War.

Looking for an ancestor of your own? Here are our top tips for searching Military records –

  • Enter as much information as you can into your Ancestry search – name, birth date or relevant places your ancestors may have lived. The more you tell us about your ancestor, the easier it will be to find good matches about him or her.
  • Remember to allow for name spelling variations and that sometimes records only used one or more initials for the given names.
  • Since each military collection includes different information, it is valuable to search collections that apply to your ancestor individually. Once you see the results for some individuals you can see what terms might be useful in the Keyword field to refine your search.
  • Once you find a matching military record, save it to your Ancestry family tree – that way you can provide evidence to back up the info in your family tree, easily share your discover with your family, and quickly find the historical record again later.

Missed this episode or last week’s episode with Gwyneth Paltrow? You can now watch them online!

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