Minnesota Historical Society Launches Veterans Grave Registration Index

The Minnesota Historical Society has launched a Minnesota Veterans Grave Registration Index, a searchable online index to over 72,000 Minnesota veterans' grave registrations. It's available for free searching at http://people.mnhs.org/vgri/. Note this index is not complete -- it does not include all veterans ever buried in Minnesota.

The bulk of the information is for veterans who died between 1930 and 1969, but there are veterans from the War of 1812 and the Civil War. The earliest date is 1857 and the latest is 1975. You may search the index by last name or by date range, county of burial, or the conflicts in which they served. A search for the last name Smith found 460 results. Results list the name of the veteran, the conflict in which they served, and the date of their deaths. (Some listings didn't contain all this information but most of the ones I looked at did.)

If you want more information than that you'll have to order a report from the Minnesota Historical Society; reports are $8. The reports can contain the full first, middle, and last name of the veteran, date and place of enlistment, serial number, rank, date and place of discharge, legal residence, date and place of birth, date and place of death, cause of death, name and address of next of kin, date and place of burial, name of cemetery, and location of the grave. Sometimes information is missing or incomplete.

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