Ancestry Day in San Francisco Blog 2 Gordon Atkinson

Gordon Atkinson presented

"Everything You Wanted to Know About FOLD3"

but I wanted to add but were afraid to ask---- luckily Gordon answered every one's question before we had to ask......

Why the name FOLD 3?

The name has to do with the traditional folding of the American flag. The correct folding of the American flag is performed in 13 folds and each of these folds has representation. The 3rd fold of the American Flag is in honor and remembrance of veterans who served in defense of their country and to maintain peace throughout the world. Fold3 is the leading U.S. military resource on the web. Fold 3 has over 78 million records on line and growing over hour.

Fold 3 is a work in process. Why we need to let our families know about this web site is this web site will not be finished in our lifetime. There are many records yet to be added to these digital images. Examples include the 1812 records are only up to the letter B and expected to be finished in 2015.

Many wars records have not been started yet. Korean war and Spanish/American war for example.

The advantages of the FOLD3 site includes quality images, Fold3 has some of the best image definition of original documents.

Another advantage of FOLD 3 is it indexed other sources not always available. For example is the records of compensation to efforts of the Civil War by either side. If a family donated bacon, a horse, etc to the war efforts on either side of the war. The family would submit a request for reimbursement. The reimbursement petition was quite lengthy and included family history to be added to the petition. This could be very helpful to family researchers.

Another very useful feature programmed into the web site is the search that allows your ancestors name to appear from many documents. All the names on a document has been recorded. If your ancestor's name appeared on another petition or court record, even a non-relative, each and every time your ancestor's name appears on a military record it will be part of a search result.

There also are some very fine interactive features to FOLD3 ---- one you can add data of your own in the text of a document and you can also add a Memorial Page to your Ancestral Veteran. There are now over 900 million memorial pages added to FOLD.

I will be updating this site to the best of my ability but also I need my next generations to know about this site. After I am gone ---data may still be added to complete "Our Story".