About Valor Registry

Who runs this

Valor Registry is built and operated by Heritage Data Labs, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (EIN 42-2118034) that uses modern document processing to digitize, index and publish military records that would otherwise sit unread in archives. Our public archive, medalsearch.net, holds more than eleven million US and Allied service records and medal citations, free and open to every researcher.

The service is free. There is no premium tier, no advertising, and nothing for sale. It is funded by donations to Heritage Data Labs.

Why it exists

A medal on its own is metal and ribbon. What makes it matter is the person who earned it, the campaign it was earned in, and the family that kept it. That story is fragile: it lives in a letter tucked in the case, in what a grandparent remembered, in a service number nobody wrote down. Every time a medal changes hands or a generation passes, some of it is lost.

Valor Registry is where that story stays attached to the medal. You record the service member, the service, and the award together — with documents, photographs, and what you know of the family history — so that the next person to hold the medal knows who it belonged to.

What it does

• Catalog by the person, not the object. Each record is a service member; their medals, ribbons and badges hang off it. A record can also be an unattributed group: medals you hold whose recipient is not yet known.
• Keep the provenance. Where a medal came from, what you know about its history, and which documents support it.
• Stay private by default. Nothing you record is visible to anyone else unless you choose to make it discoverable.
• Find each other. Discoverable records let families, collectors and researchers connect over a shared service member.
• Research from the archive. Look the person up in the public archive at medalsearch.net and bring what you find into your record.

A fuller walkthrough is on the How it works page.

What it is not

It is not a marketplace and it is not a valuation service. We do not list medals for sale, take payment, or estimate what anything is worth. It is not an authoritative record of anyone's service — entries are made by users, and for the primary source you should go to the archive that holds the original document.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or a family member who would like a record removed: write to info@heritagedatalabs.com. Our privacy policy and terms of service say exactly what we collect and how the service works.