For those of us who grew up in the Vietnam era, the draft process for previous wars can seem very unusual. The draft events for World War I certainly falls into that category. Before the end of the war all men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five were registered.

Unlike later wars, during World War I there were three primary registration dates. Each of these dates was designed to gather information on eligible men. While these three dates are not the only ones in the records, they certainly dominate the information cards.

June 5, 1917

The first registration date of June 5, 1917 was designed to register men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one (born after June 5, 1886 and before June 6, 1896).

June 5, 1918 and August 24, 1918

The second draft actually occurred on two dates. The first started on June 5 and was primarily designed to gather information on men who turned twenty-one since the draft in 1917. This draft was also designed to pick up anyone who was missed in the previous draft.

September 12, 1918

The third draft was conducted on September 12, 1918. This draft extended the lower age of the draft to eighteen years of age, and the upper age to forty-five.

Anyone who has ever been for a draft registration or physical soon realizes that it is a process where information gathering is done in a no nonsense environment. There is little room for making polite changes to one's nane, birthdate, or other facts.

For this reason we believe that the information presented on the cards is very accurate. We have already learned a great deal about full names of many people, accurate birthdates, birth locations, occupations, and even spouses when they are listed as the closest relative.

Another valuable thing about the cards is that they are often filled out by the registrant, so it is first hand knowledge and not hearsay.

The occupations listed above account for almost 80% of the occupations listed. Today our economy is driven not by farm labor but technology and the draft registration cards give us evidence of just how quickly that change was made.

In May of 2007 when we first searched our files for men who would have been eligible for the World War I draft we had a total of 40,101 individuals in the file. We arrived at our search list of 2,235 in the following way.

• First we selected only men which produced a pool of 20,535 men.
• Then we eliminated anyone with no known birth date, which left 13,198.
• Then we removed men born before September 11, 1872, leaving 8,372.
• Then we eliminate men who died before June 5, 1917, which left 8,049.
• Then we removed men born after September 12, 1900, leaving a search group of 2,235 possible draft registrants.

Not everyone was required to register, meaning everyone will not be found even if they fit the age criteria. People who were already in the military did not register. Some people enlisted before they were required to register.

Additionally, name searches are difficult when only part of a person's name is known prior to the search. As of today, October 24, 2007 we have completed the scan for cards which yielded approximately 1,402 cards, or about 63% of all possible registrants. We believe this is a significant portion of the possible cards since a large number of the unfound could in fact be men who died prior to the draft and we just cannot find their date of death. The last of the cards in this search was posted on November 5, 2007.

We took the time to clean up the images found in a number of ways before posting them to this site. We eliminated extraneous areas around the actual cards, straightening the images, checking the contrast and brightness for maximun clarity, and finally resized all the images to 750 pixels wide so that they easily fit on your screen without excessive scrolling. In the end we have an image with improved clarity and about 75% smaller than the original (file size). All this gives us an image that is easier to read and easier to download.

There are a number of problems with the original images which cannot be corrected. The original images were scanned at different sizes and clarities. Apparently the scanning was done at different times and in different locations. Obviously this leads to a number of discrepencies in image quality and there is little that can be done to improve many images.