Indiana sent its sons to every American war, and each conflict left its own trail of records. A soldier or sailor in your family is often the ancestor easiest to document — the government kept careful count.
The people in this story fill our public-record database. Search a surname and filter to Indiana.
Search Indiana records →Indiana’s wars, generation by generation
Indiana’s military thread runs from the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe and the War of 1812 through the Mexican and Spanish-American Wars to the World Wars, when Indianapolis and the Calumet mills armed the nation.
The home front
The wars of the twentieth century were fought at home as well — in training camps, National Guard armories, war plants, and Liberty-bond drives. Draft registrations, service cards, and unit histories place a Indiana family in each conflict, generation by generation.
Finding your Indiana ancestors
- Draft cards, adjutant-general records, and National Archives service files trace a soldier through any of the nation’s wars.
- Census records (free through 1950) list occupation and residence — placing your family in a specific Indiana county and town, decade by decade.
- Death & cemetery records — search our Indiana database for the people in this story and the generations around them.
- The Indiana State Archives & Indiana Historical Society in Indianapolis holds the deeper collections — company, church, military, and county records.
- Newspapers on the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America carried the obituaries, accidents, and milestones of these communities.
We work back from you to the ancestor who lived this history — census, vital, church, and cemetery records, written into a book and an interactive family site. Flat rate, no DNA test.
See how it works →Frequently asked questions
What wars did Indiana soldiers fight in?
Beyond the Civil War, Indiana men served across the nation’s conflicts — the frontier and 1812-era fighting, the Mexican and Spanish-American Wars, and both World Wars and after.
How do I find a military ancestor in Indiana?
Start with WWI and WWII draft registration cards, state adjutant-general and National Guard records, and unit histories, then order service and pension files from the National Archives.