The source of this information is not clearly identified. It may not be a complete listing of Bledsoe Countians lost in service during the Korean War. Clicking on the names goes to more details for each individual hero.
The source of this information is not clearly identified. It may not be a complete listing of Bledsoe Countians lost in service during the Viet Nam War. Clicking on the names goes to more details for each individual hero.
The source of this information is not clearly identified. It may not be a complete listing of Bledsoe Countians lost in service during World War II. Clicking on the names goes to more details for each individual hero.
The East Tennessee Veterans Memorial in Knoxville’s World’s Fair Park bears the names of more than 6,200 veterans from 35 East Tennessee counties who have died in military service since the beginning of World War I. Represented counties comprise the eastern grand division of the state plus Fentress and Sequatchie counties on the Cumberland Plateau.
The list below is current as of January, 2022. The memorial is actively amended as troops are lost in action.
Click here for more information and to search for details about the individuals listed below.
Records available at the Tennessee State Library & Archives indicate no Bledsoe County veterans completed questionnaires about their service during World War I. However, 4448 questionnaires were returned, some from residents of neighboring counties.
The World War I questionnaire project (TSLA Record Group 239) was part of an effort to gather and preserve the history of Tennessee’s involvement in what was then known as the Great War. On January 24, 1919, the state legislature resolved that a committee of 25 be appointed, to be known as the Tennessee State Historical Committee, part of whose duties was to “collect, compile, index and arrange all data and information of every kind and character relating to the part Tennessee has played in the Great War.”
Click here for more information about the questionnaires.
Click here to go directly to the searchable database of questionnaires.
Compiled from service records following the end of World War I.
Graeme McGregor Smith, mother of two World War I veterans, was one of these inspired Americans who went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that every Tennessean who served in the Great War would be remembered. Her efforts resulted in the Record of Ex-Soldiers in World War I, Tennessee Counties, 1917-1919, the compiled service records of over 130,000 soldiers and sailors from Tennessee who served in the First World War.
Click here to learn more about these compilations held at TSLA.
The original typed manuscript documents are in the Tennessee State Library and Archives; the PDF file below is a scan from microfilm of the original Bledsoe County section.
Use the tool bar at the bottom of the document to turn pages, enlarge, or reduce images.
[pdf-embedder url=”https://tngenweb.org/bledsoe/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/p15138coll38_394.pdf” title=”Bledsoe County Record of Ex-Soldiers of World War I”]
This collection highlights a time when the area that is now the state of Tennessee was land claimed by North Carolina. White settlers and their African-American slaves moved into Upper East Tennessee in the 1770s and established their own government, the Watauga Association. By so doing, these settlers clearly defied British authority which had forbidden settlement west of the Appalachian Mountain Chain in the Proclamation of 1763. Fiercely independent, these Overmountain folk and their like-minded kin in Southwest Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, and Western North and South Carolina, collectively referred to as the Southern Backcountry, had little use for distant colonial governments dominated by the British or wealthy planters.
Items in the Tennessee Virtual Archive are presented free-of-charge by the Tennessee State Library and Archives.
Click here to view a sample of Civil War military records held by TSLA.
Click here to view a sample of muster rolls for Tennessee units during the Civil War held by TSLA.
Click here to view a sample of Civil War soldiers’ photographs held by TSLA.
Click here to view a sample of Civil War visual culture artefacts (images, sheet music, and other items depicting the experience and interpretation of the War) held by TSLA.
Click here to view a sample of civilian life artefacts from the Civil War, described as “personal accounts and related documents detailing the lives of non-combatants during the Civil War.”
Click here to view a sample of documents related to women’s Civil War experiences held by TSLA.
The data contained in this site was taken from Record Group 36, the compiled service records of soldiers and sailors who served in the First World War from Tennessee. Information on individual servicemen and women came from the files of Major Rutledge Smith, Chairman of the National Council of Defense for Tennessee, World War I; from the office of the Adjutant General of Tennessee, 1933-1937; and from the report of the Provost Marshal General to the Secretary of War, 1917-1918.
The records were compiled pursuant to Senate Joint Resolution No. 76, Public Acts of 1919, and were received and stored by the Tennessee State Library and Archives in accordance with Chapter No. 301, Public Acts of 1937. They also include information about those who were killed in service. Further information about their deaths can be found in the Gold Star records at the State Library and Archives.
The fields show–in order from left to right–the serviceman’s name, age or year of birth, birthplace, notes, and page number in the original volume. The data is arranged by county. It should be noted that additional information regarding the soldier’s rank, training, dates of service, discharge, etc. can be obtained from the microfilmed records in Record Group 36.
Copies of an individual service record, as well as copies and searches of other World War I collections, can be ordered from TSLA. Please click here for instructions for ordering military records by mail.
Errors in the military records are not uncommon; it may be the case of a simple spelling error or misheard information. The information in the WWI listings is given as it appears on the original record. While we cannot change the information on the record, names which may be spelled incorrectly will be marked with a question mark (?) .
The index that follows is not a “complete” list of all Tennesseans who served in World War I. Individuals from Tennessee who enlisted in other states are not included. Only those soldiers whose names appear in the compiled service records (Record Group 36) are included in the following list.