Discover your Marine ancestor in the muster rolls from the United States Marine Corps. Learn your ancestor’s rank and enlistment date, as well as where your ancestor was stationed.
Discover your Marine ancestor in the muster rolls from the United States Marine Corps. Learn your ancestor’s rank and enlistment date, as well as where your ancestor was stationed.
This collection is of muster rolls from the United States Marine Corps, spanning the late 1700s to the end of the nineteenth century. Both an image and transcript are included with each result in this collection.
Transcripts will often include the following details:
The images will often provide additional information such as rank or remarks. The image will also reveal the names of other marines stationed at the same location as your ancestor, which can provide additional avenues of research.
As seen in the column headings on the images of the original records, muster rolls generally include the space to record the following details: name, station, rank, enlistment date, re-enlistment date, desertion or apprehension date, and offence and court-martial sentence.
These muster rolls were chronologically arranged by month and then ordered by detachment or unit. The exception to this is the records pertaining to World War I when they were sorted in two subseries: by posts and stations and by mobile units.
The original muster rolls are held by the National Archives and Records Administration, archive reference T1118.
Within these records, you can find notable individuals from Marine Corps’ history, such as Major General John A Lejeune, the 13th Commandant of the Marine Corps, and John F Mackie, the first US Marine to receive the Medal of Honor.
Begin your search broadly with just a first and last name.
You can narrow your results by including a year or location in your search criteria.
Occasionally, a first or last name was not transcribed, often owing to illegibility or where part of the image was poorly captured; try searching by just a first or last name with a year or location. Alternatively, you can search by just a year and location and then browse the image results.