Search Fold3
fold3_searchSearch Fold3 military and historical records by name, war, place, and record type, returning matching files, images, index entries, and memorials.
Instructions
Search Fold3's military and other historical records (service records, pensions, muster rolls, draft cards, census, casualty lists, newspapers, memorials). Actions:
search: hits matching the criteria; needs at least one criterion. Each hit gives type (FILE = a multi-page file such as a pension or service record; IMAGE; INDEX_RECORD = an index entry; SUB_IMAGE = one person's line on an image such as a census page; MEMORIAL), id, title, collection, its index fields, pages, and the index values that matched. Read one with fold3_record get using its type and id. About 360 chars per hit, 50 per call at most; only the first 10000 hits of a search can be reached.
facets: how the matches split by collection, war, record type and document type (counts only), to pick filters before paging through thousands of hits. Searching needs no subscription; viewing images depends on the collection (free collections such as the War of 1812 pensions open with the user's free account; most others need a Fold3 subscription, which this account does not have — fold3_session status says).
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| war | No | Only titles in this war or topic: us-revolutionary-war-us, war-of-1812, indian-and-mexican-american-wars, us-civil-war, us-civil-war-union, us-civil-war-confederate, spanish-american-war, world-war-i-united-states, world-war-ii-united-states, korean-war, vietnam-war-us, afghan-war-us, census, naturalizations, city-directories, native-american, african-american, holocaust, unit-histories, non-military, world-war-i-uk, world-war-ii-uk, war-of-1812-uk, us-revolutionary-war-uk | |
| name | No | A person's name as Fold3's Name field ("Joseph Hunt"); narrower than keywords (17,720 Joseph Hunts against 170,359 keyword hits) | |
| sort | No | search: relevance (default), alphabetical, oldest, newest | |
| count | No | search: hits per call (default 20, max 50); facets: values per facet (default 20) | |
| place | No | Place words as Fold3's Place field, e.g. "Giles County" | |
| start | No | Paging offset: index of the first item to return (default 0) | |
| state | No | Only records Fold3 places in this US state or territory | |
| action | Yes | search · facets | |
| docType | No | image (page images and files), index_record (index-only entries), memorial (Fold3 memorial pages), military_unit | |
| keywords | No | Words anywhere in the index (names, units, places, numbers), e.g. "Youngblood" or "62nd Tennessee" | |
| birthYear | No | Birth year on the record (date.vital.birth); with birthYearTo a range | |
| deathYear | No | Death year on the record (date.vital.death); with deathYearTo a range | |
| recordType | No | Only this kind of record, e.g. pension, service-record, muster-roll, draft-card, census, casualty, newspaper | |
| birthYearTo | No | End of a birth-year range | |
| deathYearTo | No | End of a death-year range | |
| serviceYear | No | Year of military service on the record (date.military); with serviceYearTo a range, e.g. 1812-1815 | |
| collectionId | No | Only this collection (title), e.g. "761" = US, War of 1812 Pension Files; ids from fold3_collection list or a hit's collectionId | |
| coverageYear | No | Fold3's generic date filter: documents whose date SPAN covers this year. A whole collection's span counts (a 1775-2019 gravesite index matches 1814), so it does not filter a person's dates; prefer birthYear/deathYear/serviceYear | |
| serviceYearTo | No | End of a service-year range | |
| coverageYearTo | No | End of a coverage-year range |