The correspondence files where we had originally found Loyd also included some letters that mentioned his military service.  This was a clue for us to go back to St. Louis and look into finding his Military Personnel File. 

Notice the burned edges on these documents?  That was due to an unfortunate fire in 1973 at the Records Center.  Thankfully, portions of Loyd’s records survived and I was able to piece together Loyd’s military service:

- February 8th, 1918: physical exam in Las Vegas (he was in good shape);

- July 5th, 1918:  mustered in at Camp Lewis, American Lake in Washington state;

- December 1918: became corporal;

- October 1, 1919: officially discharged with “excellent” character.

He also served with Company M of the 12th Infantry Division and spent a couple of nights in the hospital along the way for various stomach ailments.

As part of our ongoing efforts to help the public conduct successful research, we at the National Archives at Riverside occasionally share the research methodologies of our staff, researchers, and citizen archivists.  This post is part of a series of posts related to the research of one of our former archivists, Monique, into the life of a man named Loyd Sechrist.  Sechrist conducted surveys of Arizona immediately after statehood for the Bureau of Land Management, and records related to his life (and death) caught Monique’s curiosity.   Follow the story of Monique’s research into the history of this man here on Tumblr with the tag #Loyd Sechrist, and on our archives’ Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/nationalarchivesriverside.

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