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.  

Look into your Revolutionary War Veteran Ancestors this July!

On July 4 Americans will gather to celebrate the 238th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, the moment when thirteen colonies formally declared themselves to be the United States of America.  Six years later that independence was officially realized at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War.  Take a moment to think about how different American history would have been if the men and women of the colonies did not stand up to Great Britain.  Perhaps one of these unsung everyday heroes is even your ancestor.  

There are numerous obstacles that get in the way of finding information about your Revolutionary War veteran ancestors, the first of which is determining whether they served at all!  Since the first United States Census was conducted in 1790, eighteen years after the end of the war with only limited data recorded, and much of the original data destroyed or lost not much is to be found there.  Death records, grave markers, and local histories can provide better clues, but may be difficult to locate due to their age.

In 1800 and 1814 most of the military records for the Army and Navy belonging to the War Department were destroyed, including records from the Revolutionary War.  Since then an effort has been made to recreate the data in those records, called Compiled Military Records, by collecting information from as many supplementary materials regarding individual veterans as possible.  This includes data from muster rolls, enlistment and discharge papers, hospital records, payrolls, prison records, and rank rolls, among other sources.


Some of the most helpful records for genealogists concerning Revolutionary War veterans are pension records.  Pension records can contain supporting military documents, marriage certificates, birth records, death certificates, among other relevant documents.  Because of their age, pension records for Revolutionary War veterans may not contain as much information as those for veterans of later wars.  A look into land bounty records may also be worth your while.  Land bounties were grants of land given by the government in return for military service between 1775 and 1855.  The applications often contain information similar to that of the pension records.  Pension and Land Bounty records are kept on file at the Textual Archives Services Division in Washington D.C.  You can learn more about the Textual Archives Services Division and how to make record requests here.

The Godfrey is planning on adding 20 new records to the Revolutionary War section of the Scholar by the end of July.  This includes muster rolls, regimental histories, histories of state involvement, general histories, and pension records.  If, in the spirit of Independence Day, you feel like researching your Revolutionary War era ancestors be sure to make the Godfrey Scholar's Revolutionary War collection a part of your search!