The first three posts in this series explored the World War I draft registration cards that certain members of our family were required to complete (here), the various Bullers, both closely and distantly related, in York and Hamilton Counties who registered for the draft (here), and the policies and processes of both the registration and the draft (here). At the end of the third post I mentioned that a final post would look back to how the registration and draft were implemented in York County, where our immediate family lived. As it turns out, there is more information available than can be included in a single post, so this post will not be the last word on the matter.
For the most part, when the United States’ entered World War I on 6 April 1917, its citizens responded with enthusiastic support. The people of York County typified the spirit of the day. Even before the draft was implemented, the York-based Company M of the Nebraska National Guard issued a call for twenty volunteers in preparation for their mobilization (Sedgwick 1921, 2:801–2, here). The recruits were added in short order. The real push, however, would come with the first draft registration and subsequent call-up.
The first registration took place less than two months later, on 5 June 1917. T. E. Sedgwick’s history of York County, written in 1921, only a few years after World War I, when memories were still fresh, offers a fulsome account.
In common with every other county in the state, or community in the country, June 5, 1917, will stand out as a red-letter day in the history of York County. Since the foundation of the Republic, the American people had inherited a deep-seated prejudice against anything akin to universal compulsory military service. To ask almost ten millions of men, between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one, reared and educated to the idea of absolute freedom from any form of military service except such as they might voluntarily assume, to register for possible military service, seemed to many almost a dangerous risk for the federal Government to run. But it proved decisively that this tradition was more than offset by a popular will to win the war, and so imbued were the American people with the determination to perpetuate their democratic ideals, and so deeply impressed were they with the knowledge that it was not only necessary to raise an army, but to do it quickly, that the whole nation registered 9,586,508 men on that notable June 5th. (Sedgwick 1921, 2:805, here)
The York County registration took place in twenty-one precincts spread across the county, each one staffed with two registrars. Sedgwick continues:
York County responded on June 5th without a protest, and there was not a sign of ill feeling, not a bit of display of disloyalty, nor a single disturbance. On the contrary, there were evidences of patriotism on every hand. The twenty-one registration precincts in the county were appropriately decorated, and while the young men who gathered to register were not at all hilarious, they were registering with the air of young men willing to do their bit in whatever capacity they might be called to serve. (Sedgwick 1921, 2:805–6, here)
The York County Commercial Club toured the registration points around the county. As a measure of the patriotic fervor of the day, Sedgwick comments as follows about the Club’s visit to the Brown precinct (located north of the Henderson Township): “while Brown is a Mennonite settlement it had registered the largest percentage of the eligibles of any of them. The registration at 3:30 was forty-nine out of a possible fifty-three” (Sedgwick 1921, 2:806, here).
Sedgwick also lists the names of all 1,500+ registrants in York County (1921, 2:807–18), including Henry B. and Andrew Buller in the Brown precinct and Frank P. and Frank D. Buller in the Henderson B precinct. Only Henry B. is a close relatives of ours; he was the son of Benjamin, who was the son of David and Helena Zielke Buller (see the earlier discussion here).
With the registration complete, the next step was to decide which of the registrants would be called up first. Once again, Sedgwick offers an informative explanation:
After York County’s sons registered on June 5th, the next step in the selection of those who should be called into actual military service was undertaken by assigning to each registrant a number, proceeding serially from one upwards, the series being separate and independent for each local board area in the country. Thus each registrant in York County could be identified by citing his York County local board number and his York County serial number. The local board, by which name the Selective Service Board for the county has been commonly designated, proceeded to number the cards with red ink numbers, consecutively, without regard to alphabetical arrangement. Five lists were then prepared, one retained for the records of the local board, one copy posted in a conspicuous place in the courthouse, one copy given out for publication by the press, and the two remaining copies furnished to the state authorities at Lincoln and the office of the provost marshal general at Washington. In order then to designate with the utmost impartiality the sequence in which the registrants qualified for military service should be called as needed, a single national drawing was held on July 20, 1917, for those who had registered on June 5th. (Sedgwick 1921, 2:827, here)
The national lottery, held in Washington, D.C., consisted of a random drawing of 10,500 numbers. The order of the numbers drawn determined the order in which the registrants, who had been assigned corresponding numbers by their local (county) boards, would be called up. So, for example, when the number 258 was drawn first, it meant that all those registrants who had been assigned that number by a local board would be the first within that area to be called to service. The fact that the numbers had been assigned randomly by local boards before the drawing took place, coupled with the randomness of the drawing itself, ensured that the call-up would be as fair to all as possible. For a fuller account of the drawing, see the 21 July 1917 Washington Post report available here and the more recent description given in Lundeberg 2017.
The 20 July 1917 issue of the The York Republican offers us a concrete example of how the registration numbering system worked. In the extract of page 2 to the right, one sees that each registrant in York County was assigned a number, starting with the first name in the first precinct and proceeding consecutively through to the last name in the last precinct, one Elmer D. Wendell of York’s Fourth Ward, who was number 1594 in York County.
All four Bullers mentioned above are included in the full list: Andrew was 844, Henry B. was 845, Frank P. was 937, and Frank D. was 938.
The registrants and their numbers were listed in the paper, of course, because this was the most efficient means of informing registrants of their status. The newspaper account also provides us additional information about the initial draft. It begins by stating: “The following is the official list of those liable to conscription in York county and the serial number by which they will be drawn. 129 of these will be called upon by the government to serve in one way or another.” Based on this information, we can calculate that the initial call-up was for roughly 8 percent of all the registrants in York County (129 is 8 percent of 1,594).
As we learn from Sedgwick, however, filling the quota of 129 draftees was not so simple.
Physical examination under the draft for the purpose of securing 129 soldiers from York County began at the courthouse last Monday morning. Under the direction of Doctor McKinley, assisted by Doctor King, an average of about fifty men a day have been physically examined. The board proper consists of Sheriff Miller, County Clerk Beck, and Doctor McKinley. Nearly fifty per cent of those examined are disqualified for physical reasons, and the claims of exemption are running well above that figure. Some of the dependency claims are far fetched, and the closest examination will be given all claims.
It is now quite certain that the second call for 245 men will be pretty well exhausted before the required 129 men are secured. All claims for exemption on occupational grounds will have to be submitted to the district board, and appeal lies from exemption allowances. If appeal on dependency grounds is denied, then the man so denied has the right of appeal to the district board. Also, if anyone believes that an exemption has been wrongfully allowed, the one so aggrieved may appeal. It is a common expression that the County Council of Defense should be represented when exemptions are allowed on claims of dependency and see to it that all such claims are well founded. (Sedgwick 1921, 2:829, quoting an unnamed August 1917 source; see here)
Slowly but steadily the York County draft board collected its quota of draftees. By 6 September the first six men left the York train terminal for Camp Fulston in Fort Riley, Kansas. Eight days later a group of fifty-two followed, and on 6 October the final seventy-one left to join their comrades at the camp.
We do not know how many registrants were examined and interviewed in order to fill the county’s quota. If 50 percent were disqualified for physical reasons and more than that claimed exemption (not that all of them were granted an exemption), it would not be unreasonable to imagine that roughly five hundred men were summoned before the draft board. Perhaps this is what is meant by the phrase “second call for 245 men”: the local board issued two separate calls for 245 men in order to meet the assigned quota of 129 draftees.
So ended the first registration and its call-up. As we learned in an earlier post, the Selective Service System changed the registration and classification process after the first registrations. There is much to say about those changes and additional information about Bullers in the draft, all of which will be the subject of the next post in this series.
Works Cited
Lundeberg, Annika. 2017. “Tiny Capsules, National Service: The Draft during World War I.” National Museum of American History. Available online here.
Sedgwick, T. E., ed. 1921. York County Nebraska and Its People. 2 vols. Chicago: Clarke. Available online here and here.
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