Gallatin County, Montana has sent many of its young men and women to war overseas ever since 1898 when volunteers joined to serve in the Spanish-American War. In 1919, the American Legion was chartered by Congress to serve the needs of American war veterans, and local posts were quickly established across the country. In Gallatin County, Post No. 14 was founded in the 1920s and became the focal point for Memorial Day, Veteran's Day and other local patriotic observations along with advocacy for those county men and women who had served in America's armed forces. An early member of the post was Bozeman attorney Lloyd M. Johnson who acted as service officer from 1924 to 1925. Johnson was a veteran of World War I himself, and in addition to his American Legion duties he also joined a number of other local civic organizations including the American Red Cross where he acted as service chairman during all of World War II. Having access to local draft board, Red Cross, and Legion records, Johnson began compiling comprehensive scrapbooks of service records and obituaries for all Gallatin County veterans from the Spanish American War through the early years of the Vietnam conflict. The records were created on behalf of the American Legion, but Johnson retained posession of them until his retirement.
The Gallatin County Veterans Service Records consist of seven reels of microfilm containing the names, serial numbers, dates of service, and other pertinent information for over 7,000 men and women who joined the various branches of the United States Military from 1898 through 1965. Originally gathered into ten volumes and meticulously indexed by Johnson based on the location of the original documentation, the material was microfilmed without identification targets and there is no indication where most of the volumes begin and end within the seven reels of film produced. There is, however, an uneven chronological and alphabetical arrangement apparent which has been described in the following reel listing. The records of World War I veterans include the listing of a few Spanish American War veterans still living in 1918 and later in the early twentieth century, and the records of Korean War veterans also include a few who served during the Vietnam conflict up to 1965. In addition to the basic service documentation on any one individual, the records sometimes display additional information such as: newspaper clippings of obituaries, weddings, and service highlights; draft board registrations; and miscellaneous brochures, clippings, and typewritten information pertaining to Memorial Day observances, the establishment of the Soldier's Chapel in Big Sky, and other matters of interest to war veterans. A special scrapbook of "Honor Roll" clippings referring specifically to World War II servicemen who were either killed, taken prisoner, or listed as missing in action appears on reel three of the set, and a photocopies of that section have been bound and included with the collection.
This collection is open for research.
Original scrapbooks compiled by Lloyd M. Johnson, service officer for the American Legion Gallatin Post No. 14 in Bozeman, Montana were loaned to the Montana Historical Society for microfilming in the summer of 1967 and subsequently deposited with the Gallatin County Historical Society. The MHS microfilm was assigned collection number MF 152 and duplicates retained by MSU were reported to the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections in 1979 where it was assigned record number 79-622.
This collection was processed 2012 March 29