United States Pilgrimage Passports

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

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