Searching Still Photographs for Army Personalities
Searching for photographs of specific service members can be difficult. Within the holdings of the Still Picture Branch at the National Archives, you can find personality indexes to aid in the search for specific individuals in the military.
Recently added to the National Archives Catalog includes a digitized portion of the Army’s personality index titled 111-PX: Index to Personalities in the U.S. Army Signal Corps Photographic Files (111-SC, 111-P, 111-PC, 111-C), 1940 – 1981, covering World War II and the Korean War time period. The index can be useful for locating Army service members as well as notable personalities. A second section covering the Vietnam War time period is available onsite in our research room, and will be made available in the Catalog in the near future.
One important detail to keep in mind while searching 111-PX is that not every service member is included within the index. Typically, higher ranking individuals are the most frequently found in the index and oftentimes, individuals are not identified in the photographs. If you are unable to find the name of a specific individual, that indicates that we likely do not have a photograph of them or if we do, they were not identified in the caption.
Then, click the result titled “Index to Personalities in the U.S. Army Signal Corps Photographic Files (111-SC, 111-P, 111-PC, 111-C), 1940 – 1981,” NAID 530686.
Clicking on the title takes you to the Catalog description for the series 111-PX. Then, you can click on the blue button “Search within this series” to view all of the related Catalog entries.
Within the Catalog, the records are grouped in an alphabetical range by the last names of individuals within File Units. After clicking the “Search within this series” button, you will see a list of all of the available file units. To search, you will need to locate the group of records that includes the last name of the person you are searching for.
For example, to search for someone with the last name “Davis,” we would find the File Unit, titled “Index to Personalities in the U.S. Army Signal Corps Photographic Files, 1940 – 1954: Danner – Davis.”
After selecting a File Unit, you can view all of the cards in the alphabetical range. Below the main image viewer is a list of all of the cards. The index cards have Signal Corps numbers associated with each name, which are the individual photograph identifier numbers. Once you have located a card with the name of the person we are searching for, we can then find the six-digit Signal Corps number.
The numbers are typically five to six digits and oftentimes preceded by “SC.” The complete Signal Corps number would combine “111-SC” and the six digit Signal Corps number to be “111-SC-XXXXXX.” In this example, the photograph of Pvt. Adam H. Davis is identified by the Signal Corps number 111-SC-198304.
Local Identifier: 111-SC-198304, Original caption: “Bastogne, Belgium–Weary infantrymen of the 110th Regt., 28th Div., US 1st Army following the German breakthrough in that area. The enemy overran their battalion. (L-R) Pvt. Adam H. Davis and T/S Milford A. Sillars. Dec. 19, 1944”
Important Tips
It is helpful to know of a few gaps within the series that may cause difficulty while searching. First, a portion of the index covering last names that start with J thorough K were never transferred to NARA and it is unknown where they could be located. Next, a few cards within the index have only the “Field Number” and no associated or clear Signal Corps number. For example, a card may have only the number “FEC-49-2102,” and no easily identifiable six digit number.
Additionally, the majority of photographs within 111-SC have not been digitized. If you do locate an image that you would be interested in viewing, we invite you to our College Park Research Room to view the photo and any other related photographs as well.
If you have questions about still photographs, you may contact the Still Picture Branch at stillpix@nara.gov.
Today’s post comes from Sarah Lepianka, Archives Specialist in the Still Picture Branch at the National Archives. For additional information about these records and what you can expect to find within these series, see the original post on the Unwritten Record blog.
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