WW I Draft Registration Cards, Part Deux

Where else but here would you find a follow-up post on the subject of government paperwork from close to a century ago? Heh.

After seeing Sunday's coverage of the WW I Draft Registration Cards at Ancestry.com, Darin Price was kind enough to send over not only a scan of an original, but some helpful advice.

I saw your post on WWI Draft Registration Cards in my daily perusal of your website. If you'd like to see an example of an actual one, I've attached my grandfather's. It's interesting to see it filled out.



Of note is something that I think many people who make prop documents forget - the local draft official misspelled St. Anthony as "St. Antony." (It's a tiny, tiny place in Miller County, MO. It's just a collection of 4 or 5 houses, but in 1918 it probably had a post office and a store.) Anyway, not everyone is a perfect speller, and I've noticed that it's not all that unusual to find misspellings even on official documents. Also the rubber stamp, that I assume says "Local Board for the County of Miller State of Mo.", is not legible at the end. I always try to include those types of touches on the few prop documents that I've made. I feel that a prop document doesn't have to look perfect, but it should look *real.*

By the way, some of the cards were typewritten, but the majority from this
county were handwritten.

If you are interested in how my grandfather's draft registration turned out: he once told me that he had been called up, and he and the other draftees were put on a train for Texas - I assume for basic training. At one of the stops the train made, they received word that the Armistice had just been signed, so they were all taken off the train and sent back home on the next north-bound train.

My thanks to Mr. Price for his generosity.