Collecting Medals From Your Home State

[B24AT6]

Like many on here I am especially interested in medals that belong to those from my home state. My family has called Florida home since before the Civil War so any medal, from any timeframe, for someone from Florida is going to catch my eye. However, as I am sure most here know, Florida is a very transitive state so I have to decide what I believe qualifies as a "Floridian" and try to determine if a particular person meets my self imposed definition of a "Floridian". The obvious starting point is born in the state, that one is easy, another fairly obvious one to me is came here as a young child, but after that is where I personally feel deciding whether I consider them "from Florida" gets a little more murky and I would like to know how others that collect by state treat this question.

 

I was inspired by a few recent Florida medals that came up for sale and would be interested to know how others felt. The first case was one that initially excited me, an officially engraved WIA Purple Heart for a veteran who lived just 20 minutes from my home. Of course I immediately started to do some research and as I had suspected the veteran was actually from Ohio and had retired to Florida sometime in the 90s or early 2000s. I did not add this medal to my collection because it did not otherwise fit my collecting interests and despite the local connection did not consider the veteran to have been a Floridian. 

 

Next was an auction that had two medals/groupings awarded to Floridians that I attempted to add to my collection, but also pose a question. The first was a privately engraved WIA Purple Heart awarded to a recipient who was born and raised in Tampa; however after the war he moved to Maryland and so far as I could tell never returned to Florida. I was still interested in the medal because he was born, raised, and entered the service from Florida and is still in my mind a "Floridian" despite the fact he later permanently left. Despite my interest this medal exceeded what I was willing to pay for an unofficial medal otherwise it would have joined my collection.

 

The other, a KIA Purple Heart/Bronze Star grouping, was awarded to a servicemen who appears to have been born in Alabama but moved to Florida as a young child with the entirety of his family, who remained in the state for the remainder of their own lives. In this case the serviceman clearly adopted Florida as his home and spent a significant portion of his life here, so I considered him to be a Floridian. I happily won this grouping and look forward to bringing it back here.

 

I am lucky to be the caretaker of the medals from 8 Floridians who gave their lives in WWII, and would certainly like to add others from different eras, but it is not always easy to find these medals that meet my own criteria. So I am curious what other like minded collectors think, how do you decide what qualifies as "from" your state? is it only birth? can they have moved there outside/prior to military service? can they have moved there at ANY time? I'm sure everyone has different criteria that they try to stick to and I am curious to hear it.

 

 

[Wharfmaster]

I seek medals to men and women from my State, especially to my County. And, I will pay a small premium for them. I prefer born and lived in the State but this does not

stop me in any way from buying anything I find interesting, no matter where it comes from in the US. I have many medals to men that moved to my State after the war

and passed away here. I also collect local dog tags, I.D. and documents. 

 

 

W

[USMCR79]

11 hours ago, B24AT6 said:

Like many on here I am especially interested in medals that belong to those from my home state. My family has called Florida home since before the Civil War so any medal, from any timeframe, for someone from Florida is going to catch my eye. However, as I am sure most here know, Florida is a very transitive state so I have to decide what I believe qualifies as a "Floridian" and try to determine if a particular person meets my self imposed definition of a "Floridian". The obvious starting point is born in the state, that one is easy, another fairly obvious one to me is came here as a young child, but after that is where I personally feel deciding whether I consider them "from Florida" gets a little more murky and I would like to know how others that collect by state treat this question.

 

I was inspired by a few recent Florida medals that came up for sale and would be interested to know how others felt. The first case was one that initially excited me, an officially engraved WIA Purple Heart for a veteran who lived just 20 minutes from my home. Of course I immediately started to do some research and as I had suspected the veteran was actually from Ohio and had retired to Florida sometime in the 90s or early 2000s. I did not add this medal to my collection because it did not otherwise fit my collecting interests and despite the local connection did not consider the veteran to have been a Floridian. 

 

Next was an auction that had two medals/groupings awarded to Floridians that I attempted to add to my collection, but also pose a question. The first was a privately engraved WIA Purple Heart awarded to a recipient who was born and raised in Tampa; however after the war he moved to Maryland and so far as I could tell never returned to Florida. I was still interested in the medal because he was born, raised, and entered the service from Florida and is still in my mind a "Floridian" despite the fact he later permanently left. Despite my interest this medal exceeded what I was willing to pay for an unofficial medal otherwise it would have joined my collection.

 

The other, a KIA Purple Heart/Bronze Star grouping, was awarded to a servicemen who appears to have been born in Alabama but moved to Florida as a young child with the entirety of his family, who remained in the state for the remainder of their own lives. In this case the serviceman clearly adopted Florida as his home and spent a significant portion of his life here, so I considered him to be a Floridian. I happily won this grouping and look forward to bringing it back here.

 

I am lucky to be the caretaker of the medals from 8 Floridians who gave their lives in WWII, and would certainly like to add others from different eras, but it is not always easy to find these medals that meet my own criteria. So I am curious what other like minded collectors think, how do you decide what qualifies as "from" your state? is it only birth? can they have moved there outside/prior to military service? can they have moved there at ANY time? I'm sure everyone has different criteria that they try to stick to and I am curious to hear it.

 

 

Like you - I lived in Florida for 37 years but my wife is a 4th Generation Native so I did look for Florida Material - After awhile I did find a few medals but I found interest when I looked at the Florida National Guard as a starting point and discovered a lot more information and material. Florida is a very transient state due to the dependence on agriculture in the early 20th Century which brought a lot of fruit pickers from up north who decided to stay in the 1920's and 1930's - Their sons fought WWII but were they Floridians?

 

Also a lot of training bases were in Florida to allow year round training which brought soldiers who were from Ohio or Michigan or....They would meet local girls and get married and head overseas - some came back and built a life, others did not make it back.

 

If you are interested in your local history you should obtain The 1939 Pictorial History of the Florida National Guard - this may prove interesting and give you some leads.

 

I would like to point out that you did not mention your county in your post - if that county is your interest you should say so, and say it again and again to fellow collectors to let us know that you are serious about buying material from your area.

 

Bill

[B24AT6]

7 hours ago, USMCR79 said:

Like you - I lived in Florida for 37 years but my wife is a 4th Generation Native so I did look for Florida Material - After awhile I did find a few medals but I found interest when I looked at the Florida National Guard as a starting point and discovered a lot more information and material. Florida is a very transient state due to the dependence on agriculture in the early 20th Century which brought a lot of fruit pickers from up north who decided to stay in the 1920's and 1930's - Their sons fought WWII but were they Floridians?

 

Also a lot of training bases were in Florida to allow year round training which brought soldiers who were from Ohio or Michigan or....They would meet local girls and get married and head overseas - some came back and built a life, others did not make it back.

 

If you are interested in your local history you should obtain The 1939 Pictorial History of the Florida National Guard - this may prove interesting and give you some leads.

 

I would like to point out that you did not mention your county in your post - if that county is your interest you should say so, and say it again and again to fellow collectors to let us know that you are serious about buying material from your area.

 

Bill

Bill,

 

Thank you for the tip, I will have to track that down. I have also found Ancestry has the Florida State Census from 1866-1945 and these are very useful for determining "when" someone came to Florida or if they were born here. I am from the area right where Okeechobee and Saint Lucie counties meet so anything from either of those counties is of special interest to me. 

 

Austin

[USMCR79]

18 minutes ago, B24AT6 said:

Bill,

 

Thank you for the tip, I will have to track that down. I have also found Ancestry has the Florida State Census from 1866-1945 and these are very useful for determining "when" someone came to Florida or if they were born here. I am from the area right where Okeechobee and Saint Lucie counties meet so anything from either of those counties is of special interest to me. 

 

Austin

I am from Osceola County and we had Kissimmee and St. Cloud but in the 1980's there were a lot of local flea markets that you could find stuff in - I learned to pick up items at a reasonable price, research them, and trade them off later with local collectors for the items I desired. Okeechobee and St. Lucie Counties are still pretty rural and were more rural in the 1940's so you are defiantly in for the long haul to build your collection.

 

Bill

[mkite93]

As a fellow Floridian and Florida medal collector I understand your point and struggle. Like you I personally try and start with nativity first but I do find myself straying a bit when it come to our state in particular due to the difficulty of finding anything. For example I have what I consider a Florida group but he is buried in New York and it even says New York on his grave stone but his file indicates he was born and raised in Florida and later moved to NY and enlisted.  In comparison I’ve only had luck finding three Korean War KIAs and two Vietnam KIAs from Florida and have not come across a WWII yet. 
 

Matt

[B24AT6]

3 hours ago, USMCR79 said:

I am from Osceola County and we had Kissimmee and St. Cloud but in the 1980's there were a lot of local flea markets that you could find stuff in - I learned to pick up items at a reasonable price, research them, and trade them off later with local collectors for the items I desired. Okeechobee and St. Lucie Counties are still pretty rural and were more rural in the 1940's so you are defiantly in for the long haul to build your collection.

 

Bill

Bill,

Yes, that's a pretty big road block. Most of the stuff I have found comes from the areas that were more populated at the time, such as Tampa, Jacksonville, or the Palm Beach area. I have a decent collection of items that came from the Fort Pierce Naval Base, but nothing specific to locals.

 

54 minutes ago, mkite93 said:

As a fellow Floridian and Florida medal collector I understand your point and struggle. Like you I personally try and start with nativity first but I do find myself straying a bit when it come to our state in particular due to the difficulty of finding anything. For example I have what I consider a Florida group but he is buried in New York and it even says New York on his grave stone but his file indicates he was born and raised in Florida and later moved to NY and enlisted.  In comparison I’ve only had luck finding three Korean War KIAs and two Vietnam KIAs from Florida and have not come across a WWII yet. 
 

Matt

 

Matt,

 

I'm pretty much the same way, I will add anything that interests me, not necessarily just items from Floridians. I find maybe one a year if I am lucky so it would be difficult to build much of a collection if I limited myself to only Florida. I would like to add medals from Korea or Vietnam, but my luck has been the opposite, I have only ever found WWII medals so far. As far as the medal group you mentioned, I would count it myself since he was born and raised here.

[RDUNE]

I collect Virginia related medals, and my definition of "Virginian" has evolved a bit since I started. At first I only looked for items named to native born Virginians, but I have since expanded my definition of "Virginian". Early on I basically took what I could get, even if the Virginia connection was a little loose. I have a couple of Purple Hearts named to service members who were born elsewhere but moved to Virginia, specifically Roanoke, shortly after the war. They spent the remainder of their lives here, raised children here, and thus I more or less consider them Virginians. I also have a Purple Heart to a native of my town who was wounded on D-Day, recovered at a hospital in Maryland, and stayed there the rest of his life. I'm at a point where I really only seek medals named to native born Virginians, especially service members from southwestern Virginia, but I'll still pick up other pieces as they become available. 

-Ryan 

[Dave]

I like buying medals to Floridians because I know I can sell them easily. 🤣

 

When I was collecting, I had a focus on medals to specific counties in California. Because California is a big state with a large populace (even in the early part of the last century) it's easy to go broke buying medals from Californians in general, so I focused on counties were I lived or grew up...or, with Los Angeles county (where I grew up) I focused on specific cities, as even collecting medals to veterans from Los Angeles county would make you go broke in a hurry. 

 

Because it wasn't terribly difficult to find medals from these areas, I had to further refine my focus. Interestingly, particularly during the Depression, a LOT of people moved to California (So Cal in particular) as a way to restart their lives in the industrial "boom" that was taking place there, as well as for the weather (which is why my mom's parents came to So Cal...they were advised the weather was better for their health. Since most of them passed away at ages over 100, it seemed to work!) 

 

In the end, I focused only on medals to casualties who had spent most of their lives within specific cities. "Most" was a general term, depending on how much I liked the group. 🤣 In short, if they had spent at least a part of their lives living/growing up in a specific town, I'd go for the group. When I sold off my collection, the medals that were the last to go were the ones from places where I grew up, so I had a very close tie to them geographically. It was a fun way to collect and also pretty neat to preserve the legacies of people who had lived, in some cases, just "down the street" from me in decades past. 

[srossio]

This is an interesting discussion.  I just stumbled across it while doing some other research and thought I'd chime in.  I originally decided to only collect I.D.'d medals from my particular city.  I knew it would be difficult but not impossible as I am from a community that was not huge but of a fairly good size during World War II.  Boy was I wrong!  Since making that decision I have widened the circle to include the county and a bit beyond.  This has had better results and I have acquired a few amazing pieces over the years.  I should mention that the only medals I have, so far, acquired from my original location of my city are two KIA purple hearts which surprise me as I feel that these medals are the rare of the rare due to families holding on to them.
As for my criteria, besides the boundary portion...I decided at the very beginning that the person had to have been born or raised in my set geographical area...and had to have entered the war while residing here.  Weather he/she stayed here after the war or not doesn't bother me.  To give an example...I had the chance to buy a small medal grouping of an individual who was born in my neck of the woods but then moved west just prior to World War II (his family still lived here).  He enlisted, served and returned to where he resided out west.  As cool as it was, it just didn't fit my criteria so I passed.  I set this criteria for two important reasons, 1) me not being overly wealthy and (more importantly) 2) me having a wife that I love and whom I promised I would not allow my collection leak from my military basement enclave into other parts of the house (and boy did I promise!!!) so I am limited as to space! 
Let me add that my wife is great and let's me do what I want in this hobby within, what I feel, are fair boundaries!