Tuesday's Tip: Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Database

So you've checked the Godfrey Scholar and still haven't located a history of your ancestor's Civil War regiment. Where else can you go to find out where he served?

Veteran's Tombstone

Go to https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/soldiers-and-sailors-database.htm.  Scroll down and then click on "Regiments."

Fill in as much information as you know, and click search.  Your results should include the unit in question.

Here's information on Col. Kingsbury's 11th Regiment, Connecticut Volunteer Infantry.

This Week on the Scholar

We have quite the eclectic mix of additions to the Scholar this week!  Of particular note are records from the now closed Roberts Funeral Home in Middletown, Connecticut.  The current owners of the records, the Doolittle Funeral Home, gave the Godfrey exclusive permission to host the records on the Scholar, so you will not find them anywhere else. 



Biographies
Mrs. Leicester's School
Prison Life and Reflections: Alanson Work, James Burr, and George Thompson
Samuel Sewell: The World he Lived In
Frederick Seward: Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman
William Henry Seward: American Statesman
Work of William Seward Vol. 1
William Sharp: Memoir Vol. 1
William Sharp: Memoir Vol. 2
Memorial Addresses of James Schoolcraft Sherman
Memoir of H.B. Soule
Memorials of Joseph Sumner

Church Records
Portland, CT, Evangelical Lutheran Zion Church Record Book 1872-1888
Portland, CT, Evangelical Lutheran Zion Church Record Book 1888-1903

Foreign
A Significant Emigration Introduction
A Significant Emigration Vol. 12



Funeral Home
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1941-42
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1943
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1944
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1945
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1946
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1947
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1948
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1949
Robert Funeral Home Record Cards 1950

Genealogies
Seldens of Virginia and Allied Families
Memorials of the Descendants of William Shattuck
Sprague Family Memorial
Stiles Family in America
Symmes Memorial

Military: Civil War
Nurse and Spy in the Union Army: Emma Edmonds

State and Local Histories
Early History of New England

Iowa

Iowa Historical Record: July, 1890 Iowa Historical Record: January, 1891 Iowa Historical Record: October, 1891 Iowa Historical Record: April, 1892 Iowa Historical Record: July, 1892 Iowa Historical Record: January, 1893 Iowa Historical Record: April, 1893 Iowa Historical Record: July, 1893 Iowa Historical Record: October, 1893 Massachusetts Indian Names and Places in Worcester County Worcester County MA Warnings 1737-1788 Pennsylvania Reminiscences of the Early History of Scranton Vital Records: Massachusetts Abstracts of Early Woburn Deeds 1649-1700 Woburn Records 1640-1873: Part 2 Deaths Woburn Records 1640-1873: Part 3 Marriages

 Not a Scholar?  Visit our website to subscribe or call the library at (860) 346-4375 to join today.

Last Week on the Scholar

We apologize for the delay in posting this previous week: computer issues caused an unfortunate, but thankfully temporary, roadblock.  So, last week we added a selection of exciting new genealogies and biographies to the Scholar+ Digital Library, including the autobiography of businessman and entertainer extraordinaire P.T. Barnum!  We've gotten through the backlogged Bs and are now well into the Cs!

Keep watching the blog for more updates and be sure to check out the Scholar's ever growing collection.

Biographies
Spencer Fullerton Baird: A Biography*
Struggles and Triumphs: Autobiography of P.T. Barnum*
The Life of John Brainerd*
Prof. Henry Bronson, M.D.*
Samuel Gilman Brown*
Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch: Architect*
American Men of Letters: William Cullen Bryant*
A Brief Account of the Life of John Casse*

Genealogies
The Baldwin Genealogy*
The Ballous in America*
The Banks Family*
The Barker Genealogy*
Bartholomew Family Records*
The Beckwiths*
The Beville Family of VA, GA, and FL*
The Bingham Genealogy*
Binney Family Genealogy*
Genealogy of Thomas Bird*
The Boone Family*
Descendants of Charles Bowler*
The Brigham Family History*
Genealogy of the Buford Family in America*
The Bull Family*
The Burke and Alvord Memorial: A Genealogical Account of the Descendants of Richard Burke of Sudbury, MA*
Burley or Burleigh Family*

Military- Civil War
The Cannoneer: Recollection of Service in the Army of the Potomac*

Not a Scholar?  Visit our website to subscribe today or call the library at (860) 346-4375 to join today.

*Searchable

This Week in the Scholar

At long last every book on the Godfrey Scholar, with the exception of a few miscellaneous volumes, is available in our Page Viewer and completely searchable!  No more loading immense pdfs and no more painstakingly searching through every book on the off chance it mentions the person you are looking for!

As an aside note we recently discovered and fixed a bug preventing users of Internet Explorer 10 and previous version from utilizing the Page Viewer fully.  We apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused. 

We've also added more volumes of Doolittle Funeral Home Burial Returns and begun work on adding scans and a complete index of eleven volumes of burial records from the Dunn Funeral Home in Connecticut!  Check back next week to see the full set!

Funeral Home Records

Doolittle Burial Records Volume 56, November 1952 to 1954

Doolittle Burial Records Volume 58, May 1955 to January 1958

Genealogies

The Southmayd Record*

Revolutionary War

Pennsylvania Archives Series 2, Volume 13*

Civil War

Michigan in the War*

State and Local Histories

This Collective History of Worcester County Vol. 2*

Campbell's Missouri Gazetteer*

The History of Pike County Missouri*

A Collective History of Albany, New York Vol. 1*

A Collective History of Albany, New York Vol. 4*

An Introduction to the Ontario Land Purchase*

Vital Records

Extracts from Colchester Connecticut Records*

Vital Records of Kingston Massachusets to the year 1850*

Vital Records of Norton Massachusetts to the year 1850*

Vital Records of Taunton Massachusets to the year 1850*

Vital Records of Weston Massachusetts*

Vital Records of Wrentham Massachusets*

 Not a Scholar?  Visit our website to subscribe today or call the library at (860) 346-4375. 

*Searchable

Researching your Civil War Veteran Ancestors

Working off of last week's post about researching your Revolutionary War veteran ancestors we thought the logical next step would be to highlight how the Godfrey can help you research your Civil War veteran ancestors!  More than 2.8 million men and an estimated few hundred women served on both sides of the Civil War.  To this day the Civil War remains the most deadly war fought by American soldiers.  A study performed in 1889 by William F. Fox and Thomas Leonard Livermore approximated that 620,000 soldiers died over the five years of fighting but more recent estimates place the number dead as high as 850,000.   To compare, an estimated 680,778 American soldiers have died in all other wars combined, including the present war on terror.


So, let us say you have researched your Civil War veteran ancestor extensively.  You know dates of service, vital information, even a few notes on specific events that happened to while they served.  Of course the next thing you will look for is which battles they served in.  The National Archives themselves warns you to be careful when pursuing this information!  Presuming that someone fought in a battle because their dates of service indicate the person was with a specific company at a specific time is not recommended.  Muster rolls are only accurate for the day they were taken, and even then the possibility exists that someone on combat duty could have been relegated to other tasks that day.  The only way to come close to conclusively proving your ancestor fought in a specific battle, in most cases, is to see their name mentioned in records or histories as having done so. 

This is where the Godfrey comes in.  The library houses over 500 histories and biographies relating to the Civil War, 104 of which are available in the Scholar+ Digital Library.  These include biographies and autobiographies of famous generals from both sides of the conflict.  But more important for those researching battles and individual soldiers is the extensive collection of regimental histories from Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.  Everything about the regiments, from the members to location they were stationed to the battles they participated in, can be found in these histories. They are well worth a look for anyone researching their Civil War veteran ancestors!

For those of you looking for general information on the Civil War rather than histories of specific regiments and people, the Godfrey has that too!  From histories of the war as a whole to accounts focusing on either the Confederate or Union armies, we've got a little bit of everything!  Our collection even contains a history of prominent female participants in the war, Frank Moore's Women of War.  So if you're researching your ancestors of just the Civil War in general be sure not to overlook the Godfrey's collection!

Official military records for Civil War veterans can be found at the National Archives in Washington DC and regional archives around the United States.  These include Compiled Service Records, Pension Requests, and, in some cases, records of events- compiled histories of companies or units put together using information from the muster rolls.  Records of events can differ drastically in the level of detail and amount of information included.  More information on these records and how to obtain them can be found on the National Archives' website.