Civil War Soldiers
The original service records of Union and Confederate Civil War Soldiers
and the pension records of Union veterans are maintained at the National
Archives Building in Washington, DC, where they are available for research
to anyone at least age 16.
The records exist in their originally created form or on microfilm.
You can request copies of those records by ordering online or by using the NATF forms
85 and 86 (see right).The military service records and pension files are
separate series of records and must be requested separately.
For example, if you need both the service record and the pension file
for one particular veteran who fought for the Union, you need to submit
two separate orders.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), www.archives.gov,
does not have custody of Confederate soldier pension files. For additional
information regarding Confederate pension files, please contact the
State
Archives for the state where the veteran lived at the time he would have been
eligible for a pension.
For a successful
search of the records, certain specific information is required, including:
Full name, state in which he served, and branch of military. You must
also indicate the side on which he fought, Union or Confederate. If
a file is found for the veteran in question, NARA will supply copies
of documents that provide pertinent information about the veteran and
his family. Instructions at the National Archives
Order Online Web Site
or on the NATF Forms 85 and 86 explain the payment procedure for copies.
Also, Bertram Hawthorne Groene's "Tracing Your Civil War Ancestor"
(Winston-Salem, N.C.: John F. Blair, 1973) is an easy-to-read guide
to sources of information on Civil War soldiers.
Civil War Regiments
There are four publications which offer more information
on Civil War regiments. Bertram Groene's "Tracing Your Civil
War Ancestor" discusses several different sources on Civil War regiments.
Charles E. Dornbusch's four volumes "Military
Bibliography of the Civil War" contains information on thousands of
Civil War publications. To discover more information on Union regimental
histories one should first look at Frederick Dyer's "A Compendium of
the War of the Rebellion" which is published by Morningside Press.
For Confederate regimental histories, Joseph H. Crute, Jr. and Stewart Sifakis separately compiled Confederate unit histories: Crute's "Units of the Confederate Army" which is published by Olde Soldier Books, Inc., 18779 B North Frederick Rd., Gaithersburg, Maryland, 20879; and Sifakis'"A Compendium
of the Confederate Armies" (11 vol.) which is published by Facts on File, 460
Park Avenue South, New York, New York, 10016.
As for archives, the National Archives in Washington, D.C. has a wealth
of information on Civil War regiments in the Records of the Adjutant
General's Office, 1780s-1917, Record Group 94. This record groups consists
of 82 linear feet of bound records and 56 linear feet of unbound records.
The Army's Military History Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania also
contains several thousand reference bibliographies on
regiments.
And finally, one may uncover information by visiting or writing to
any one of the National Park Service's battlefield
sites. The rangers offer information through talks, walks, films,
dioramas, maps, and in many cases they have access to extensive research
libraries at the parks.