United States Pilgrimage Passports
On Mar 2, 1929, President Calvin Coolidge signed P.L. 70-952. That law authorized the War Department to arrange trips with a United States Pilgrimage passport, by the mothers and widows to the overseas graves of soldiers, sailors, and Marines who died between April 5, 1917, and July 21, 1921. Congress later expanded eligibility to include the mothers and widows of men buried at seas or whose place of burial was unknown. United States Pilgrimage Passports

After World War I, more than 30,000 American dead from that conflict remained overseas, buried in U.S. cemeteries. The law’s passage resulted from the work of the mothers and widows (The “American Gold Star Mothers,” founded in 1928 by Grace Darling Seibold of Washington.) of those servicemen and their supporters. They pushed for the Pilgrimage to the gravesides at government expense. International travel was not as every day as it is now, and the cost of such travel was beyond the means of the families of many of the dead. United States Pilgrimage Passports

The War Department prepared and submitted to Congress a list of the mothers and widows it identified as falling under the provisions of the law. The report was arranged by state and thereunder by county. In addition to the name of the mother or widow, the list indicates the relationship to the deceased service member, the name of the decedent along with rank and service organization, the cemetery, and an indication of whether the mother or widow desired to make a pilgrimage in 1930 or later. The House of Representatives published the report as an official House Document. United States Pilgrimage Passports

Travel outside the United States requires a passport. To facilitate travel by the mothers and widows, the Department of State established the “Special Pilgrimage Passport.” Those documents were valid only during the mother or widow’s trip. The Department charged no fee for those passports. The resulting travels took place between 1930 and 1933. This Pilgrimage is also known as the “WWI Gold Stars Mothers Pilgrimage.”

Since the Department of State issued passports only to American citizens and numerous mothers and widows did not hold that status, the Department established the particular “Pilgrimage Travel Document” for use by those women who owed allegiance to the U.S. The Department charged no fee for the travel documents.

The War Department asked the Department of State to collect information on the racial background of the travelers. The War Department wanted to know if the women were “of the Caucasian, Oriental, African, etc. races.” This was done to “obviate the possibility of embarrassment and confusion because of placing persons of different races together.” This segregationist move led to later controversy and some actions by the African American community to boycott the pilgrimages. United States Pilgrimage Passports

The Department of State sent the pilgrimage passports and travel documents to the War Department, which delivered them to the travelers. At the end of the trip, the War Department collected the documents for transmission to the Department of State for cancellation. The Department of State also facilitated contacts with the governments of the countries visited on such matters as securing the necessary visas and the formal ceremonial aspects of the visits. United States Pilgrimage Passports

Conclusion: Such Pilgrimage passports are very rare, and the folio-type for non-Americans are even extremely rare, as they must have been returned after the trip. Hence, finding a Pilgrimage passport of any type is a massive challenge for passport collectors.

Issued only for pilgrimages to the European cemeteries “for mothers and widows of members of the military and naval forces of the United States who died in the service at any time between April 5, 1917, and July 1, 1921, and whose remains are now interred in such cemeteries.” Congress later extended eligibility for pilgrimages to mothers and widows of men who died and were buried at sea or who died at sea or overseas and whose places of burial were unknown. The Office of the Quartermaster General determined that 17,389 women were eligible. By October 31, 1933, when the project ended, 6,693 women had made the Pilgrimage. Once the quartermaster decided a woman was qualified, she was sent a questionnaire. United States Pilgrimage Passports

Remark: There must have also been special passports with limited validity issued to widows and other close relatives of men who lost their lives in the “D-Day” landings in Normandy during WWII to attend memorial services in Bayeaux, France, in June 1955. However, I have never seen any pictures of such a document.

Stay tuned for a follow-up article of a woman who made the trip in 1930.

I have in my collection a “Vimy Pilgrimage Passport” from Canada, which had the same purpose for Canadians. Those are even rarer as only about 6000 have been issued!

United States Pilgrimage Passports

Passport-collector.com, founded in 2010 by passport historian Tom Topol, is a leading resource on passport history. The site features over 1,000 researched articles on the origins, evolution, and cultural significance of passports. It serves collectors, historians, and anyone interested in how travel documents reflect national identity and global events. Passport history, passport collector, collecting passports, passport fees, vintage passport collector, collectible documents, passport collection, diplomatic passport, passport office, celebrity passports, travel document, vintage passports for sale, old passports for sale, Reisepass, passport fees, most expensive passport in the world, passport colors, passport prices around the world, passport cost by country, cost of passports around the world, passport fees by country, Third Reich passport