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My great-uncle Lester Clifton of Springfield, Illinois registered for the WWI draft and on the bottom left side of the draft card is a large zero or uppercase 'O'. I cannot find out what this marking means.

UPDATE: Here is an image of the draft card (courtesy of GeneJ): enter image description here

Michelle 'Shelly Clark' Wetzel
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  • Interesting. I viewed the record and note also that a large X appears marked through the left or front side of the card. – GeneJ Oct 23 '12 at 18:32
  • Viewed the record of a Lester Marion Cox from the same place; his record also has the X marked through and O stamped at the lower left. – GeneJ Oct 23 '12 at 18:35
  • Ha! Lester H Crist has the O, but no X marked across. Note that the three cards I viewed were all from the same place, and all from the earliest draft (5 June 1917) – GeneJ Oct 23 '12 at 18:37
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    I had forgotten about the large X crossing the page. I thought it might have meant he didn't qualify for some reason or that he had died in the war and they marked his card to show that at the local level. Thank you for the input. – Michelle 'Shelly Clark' Wetzel Oct 24 '12 at 20:08
  • As you can tell from my comments above, I really like this question. I'm tempted to add the digital image, just so folks see how pronounced that "O" really is. – GeneJ Oct 24 '12 at 20:21

1 Answers1

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I suspect O means they are of draft age, and X means too old. In our area (southern Ohio, northern Ky) the draft board had two forms. One had blank area in bottom left and was used for older men. Another had "If person is of African descent, tear off this corner" printed on bottom left. This second card was used for all men age 30 and under. I'm sure the cut-off age changed as the war progressed.

Rusty Erpenbeck
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