SAR Service to Veterans Medal – Patriot Grave Registry Points

This is a continuation of informative articles on how to participate in the SAR Service to Veterans Medal. This article contains information about the SAR Patriot & Grave Index. The SAR Patriot & Grave Index is a database that contains information that can help with research and the membership process. Points are awarded by donating new location and documentation of new Patriot Grave information to the National Patriot Graves Registry Committee. The maximum number of point per year for this activity is 40. Each donation that is made is worth 5 points each. Therefore, you could donate information about 8 graves a year to receive points. However, remember that this is for new information.

The greatest thing that we can do for our Patriot ancestors, is to make sure that they are not forgotten. So, please take the time to write a biography for your Patriot ancestor. If there is already a submission on the SAR Patriot & Grave Index you can still submit a biography to our webmaster to have it posted to our Patriot Ancestors listing.

So what do these things look like? Well, I am going to use one of my Patriot ancestors as the example, John Coy. I created two different versions of his biography. The first one is an example of what I posted to the Cincinnati SAR website. The things that I like to include are vital record information about the Patriot, his wife and all of his children. These items will help others in their pursuit of becoming a member of the SAR in the future. Next, I try to find as much as I possibly can about the soldiers time in the service. This would be things like, the regiment, the regimental commander, the company commander, the uniform, and battles.  In this one I have diagrams, photos, and additional information from a soldier’s diary about the day of the Battle of Bunker Hill and the following few days. Here is a link to the biography on our website for your review.

After I create a biography for the Cincinnati SAR website, I create a trimmed down version for the SAR Patriot & Grave Index. You should do this in Microsoft Word format if possible. This is the format that is requested by SAR. Next, pull out all of those cool pictures, etc that you used for the website. The SAR requests that you have 500 words maximum with your submission to the SAR Patriot & Grave Index. In my case for John Coy, he had 12 children so it is very difficult to get down to that number. In fact, I had 1195 words that I submitted. Here is the link to the version I sent to the SAR so you can compare the one I have on our chapter website. You will see that it is about a page and a half shorter than the original. An important note, you really want the biography to be at least 200 word. Ideally, you want the biography to be as close to 500 words as possible.

In order to donate information to the registry there is a form that you fill out and send in. This can be sent in by mail or by email. If you send the form in by email, remember you can also send a biography with the form in Microsoft Word format along with the form. If you have a photo of the headstone, submit that as an attachment to the email as well. The form, the photo and your biography may be emailed to patriotbios@sar.org. The form can be found at the following Link.

You can go to the Patriot Ancestors tab on the Chapter Website to see what others have submitted for their Patriot Ancestors. There are plenty of great ideas and biographies to use as a template.

If you submit your biography and forms to the national website please copy our chapter Revolutionary Sites and War Graves Committee and our chapter Veterans Committee Chairman to ensure that you receive the appropriate credit for the SAR Service to Veterans Medal.

I look forward to posting your Patriot ancestors biography to the website.

-Compatriot S. Smith