unclaimed military medals

Unclaimed Military Medals - Jefferson City, Mo. (KFVS) - Missouri State Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick wants Missourians to search the state's unclaimed property database for unclaimed military medals and insignia.

Treasurer Fitzpatrick said there are currently more than 200 military medals and insignia held by the state Division of Unclaimed Property.

Unclaimed Military Medals

"My office will never sell or destroy these medals — but we want to return them," Fitzpatrick said. "Our effort to raise awareness about these medals this month reflects our commitment to return them to the heroes who earned them. As always, we thank America's military veterans for their service to this great country."

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Several museums and veterans homes will display banners in reception centers and lobbies to encourage visitors to search the database of unclaimed properties.

A complete list of medals, names and last known addresses of vault owners can be found here.

According to the Missouri Department of Treasury, every year financial institutions, businesses, government agencies and other organizations transfer millions of dollars in cash and vault contents to the state.

These entities are required to transfer unclaimed property to the Ministry of Finance after there has been no contact or documented transaction with the owner for five years.

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The contents of safes often contain heirlooms and family memories. Some of the items found are military medals and insignia.

Woman whose car was dragged 5 miles under half-drinking, ran a red light, according to crash report This week marks two major civil war anniversaries: America's deadliest war began on April 12, 1861, when southerners who seceded from the Union shot at Fort Sumter of government in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, and came to an unofficial end on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to future President Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Wash. Since those days, the story of the war continues to unfold.

The unprecedented violence of the Civil War set new precedents for recognition of military service. The Medal of Honor, the first medal that enlisted military service members could be nominated to receive, began to be awarded after 1862. The Civil War Campaign Medal was created in the early 1900s, around the 40th anniversary of the end of the war. Even Memorial Day was established with the Civil War in mind.

In 1866, the West Virginia Legislature passed a resolution authorizing the awarding of medals to officers and soldiers who were honorably discharged, killed in action, or died from causes related to battle wounds. The medals were "a shining proof of the high regard on the part of the state of your devotion, patriotism and services," as West Virginia's first governor, Arthur Borman, wrote in a letter to a veteran in 1867. And the war was particularly important. to the people of West Virginia, because it did not become a state until 1863, after a two-year effort launched by Virginians who wanted to remain in the Union.

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The state authorized the minting of 26,000 medals in honor of the men who fought in their regiments. But of that number, there are 3,392 that have yet to be claimed.

Now, with the help of new technology, the state is making an effort to ensure that those medals go to the descendants of those who served. People who believe they have ancestors who served in West Virginia can search the list of names of medal recipients on the website for the state archives and apply to prove they are related.

West Virginia was not the only state in the Union to approve these medals, but it was among the first and its medal distribution process is unique. The same year that West Virginia approved its medals, Ohio commissioned medals from Tiffany & Co. For the 40th anniversary of the Civil War, the New Jersey Legislature signed three medals. And like West Virginia, Massachusetts — which authorized medals in 1906 — has a collection of more than 800 unclaimed Minutemen medals, but has no intention of distributing them. (Brigadier General Leonid Kondratyuk, director of historical services for the Massachusetts National Guard, cites a lack of resources and says he has seen few cases of descendants appearing on the job in his last 20 years.) Representatives of the Ohio, New York Department of Historical Military Records of York and New York Jersey said they had no collection of unclaimed medals.

"I've never seen in any other state [besides West Virginia] a notice that says, 'We still have medals,'" says Robert J. Waltz, a historian of Union Civil War veterans. "Most of them were issued then the veterans lived."

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According to his count, there were about 409,000 union veterans alive in the 1890s, just under 250,000 around 1900 and about 34,000 in the 1920s.

The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), which was the leading organization of Union veterans, issued the medals. But the more veterans died, the greater the chance that the knowledge of these medals was forgotten in the families. In the case of West Virginia's medals, there was a surge in interest in 1963, around the 100th anniversary of the state's founding—but generally, claims came in, according to Randolph Marcum, who runs the medal program at the West Virginia State Archives and is a veteran himself.

Jerry Hawley, 49, discovered his great-grandfather Andrew J. Hawley's name on a list of West Virginia medal recipients through MyHeritage.com in 2017. (The spelling of her last name has changed over the years. ) A genealogy service and DNA testing helped Hawley, who lives in Thornville, Ohio, polish his family tree and locate the US census documents he needed to prove the medal belonged to his family. Haley himself discovered that his great-great-grandfather had fought against one of his other great-great-grandsons, Anderson C J. Bradley, who sided with the Virginia Confederacy—a phenomenon not so surprising given the history of the separation of the two states .

Filing a claim can be a long process. Birth, death and marriage records on the West Virginia State Archives website are searchable, but only up to a point. When West Virginia was part of Virginia, counties weren't required to keep records of births and deaths until 1853, so research is difficult when it comes to finding people born before the split—whatever the case was for the men who served in the Civil War. Additionally, US census records prior to 1850 listed only the head of the household by name, and used markers to count other family members. This means that people making a claim may have to dig for other types of verification, such as probate records, land titles, notices of marriages in newspapers or obituaries detailing the deceased's surviving family members. Many medal recipients also dispersed and went to the West after the war, making them difficult to trace.

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As for Holly, he filed his lawsuit last spring. In January 2019, the medal for recognizing his father's honorable discharge came by post. The process was worth it, Holley says, to get something that honors his great-grandfather's hard work.

"He never opened it, never put on his uniform," he says. "He earned it. He just didn't come back to get it."

One day, he plans to bury the medal with his great-grandfather in his grave in Green Bottom, W.Va., on the West Virginia-Ohio border.

After all, he doesn't need the medal in his hands to convey the immeasurable pride this tangible medal represents to his family—a family that also includes veterans of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and both world wars. . "My son is in the army. He wears the uniform, takes an oath," he says proudly, "and makes the same sacrifice." JEFFERSON CITY, Mo () - Missouri State Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick is asking for help reuniting veterans and their families with military personnel who have not been claimed for medals.

Missouri Treasurer Asks For Help Returning Unclaimed Military Medals

The Missouri Department of the Treasury currently has 251 military medals and insignia for security. Five Purple Hearts, four Bronze Stars and more than 100 other service medals have gone unclaimed as state leaders mark Veterans Day.

"As we honor and remember America's military veterans, I want to remind Missourians of the more than 200 military medals and insignia currently held by the Unclaimed Property Division," Fitzpatrick said in a news release. "Treasury's policy is to never sell or dispose of these medals - and it is a top priority to return them to their rightful owners. I encourage Missourians to search the list and see if you recognize a name . Together, we can return these medals to the heroes who deserved them. As always, we thank America's military veterans for their service to this great country."

Every year, financial institutions, companies, government agencies and other organizations move millions of dollars in cash, securities and the contents of safes.