Veterans Affairs Board

The fiscal-year (July-June) report of the Mississippi State Veterans Affairs Board summarizes the agency's efforts to regulate health services for Mississippi military veterans. The Department of Archives and History has electronic (PDF) copies of the report from 2013.

Series 145 consists of pension applications from and correspondence with widows and descendants of Confederate veterans. The individual files include such items as pension applications, correspondence about the applicant and the applications, and final disposition of the application. A few files have copies of the veteran's death certificate, the couple's marriage license, pensions for a "helpless" child of a Confederate veteran, and requests for grave stone markers for a Confederate veteran's grave. Images of the documents were created by FamilySearch onsite at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in 2011 and are arranged by veterans' last names.

The World War I Statement of Service Card project, created by an act of the United States Congress on July 9, 1918, sent each state cards listing the decorations and citations of its citizens who served in the armed forces prior to World War I. This series consists of two pieces of correspondence and three information cards, representing four veterans, prepared by the War Department during the project.

Captain Henry Metcalfe, an 1868 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, who gave Mississippi as his state of residence, was an ordnance officer. While stationed at Springfield Armory in Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts (November 1870 to July 1875), Metcalfe aided the Ottoman Government in acquiring the .45 caliber Peabody-Martini rifle. For his work, Metcalfe was awarded the Turkish Order of the Osmanie on January 31, 1881.

Second Lieutenant Henry H. Ogden, Woodville, Wilkinson County, Mississippi, was awarded a Distinguished Service Medal for "exceptionally meritorious and distinguished services in a position of great responsibility" for his participation in the United States Army Air Service's successful first flight around the World that took place from April 6 to September 28, 1924. It was during this flight that Ogden received his promotion from Staff Sergeant to Second Lieutenant.

Second Lieutenant Reuben Smith Turman of Houston, Chickasaw County, Mississippi, received his appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point in December 1889. On March 23, 1896, Turman received his commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Sixth Infantry Regiment, United States Army. In June 1898, the regiment was sent to Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Turman was mortally wounded on July 1, 1898, at the Battle of San Juan, Santiago, Cuba. For his actions in battle, Turman was posthumously awarded a Silver Star citation for gallantry. He was interred at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington County, Virginia.

Captain James Waterman Watson, Port Gibson, Claiborne County, Mississippi, graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1880. He was an officer in the Tenth Cavalry Regiment, United States Army, serving in Arizona and Montana before being detailed to Cuba during the Spanish-American War. About 1910, Watson settled in Holguín, Holguín Province, Cuba, where he died on May 11, 1920. Watson was posthumously awarded two Silver Star citations for gallantry in action at Las Guasimas, Cuba, and the Battle of Santiago, Cuba, on July 1, 1898.

The materials presented here include two series of records received from Mississippi’s Veterans Affairs Board: Series 1730, Mississippi World War I Veterans Index Books, 1917-1919, and Series 1731, Mississippi World War I Statement of Service Cards, 1917-1919. Also included are three bound volumes comprising manuscript collection Z/0291.000/S, Master Alphabetical Index of World War I Veterans (Mississippi).