National Register of Historic Places listings in Pettis County, Missouri

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Nancy Fortna: Know your records was designed to inform our staff, volunteers, researchers, and the general public on the records of the National Archives and how they can aid in historical research. We offer not only the weekly lecture series but also genealogy workshops, symposia, the annual genealogy fair, a book discussion group, and a researcher newsletter. If you would like more information about how to contact us, there is a flyer on the back table. I hope that when you came in that you did sign in and pick up the handouts that are available – that John brought for us. We are today going to talk about documenting death in the Civil War. We will explore the death records created during and after the Civil War by the War Department, examining how they documented personal circumstances of soldiers’ deaths in various situations including the battlefield and military hospitals and prisons. Our speaker today is John Deeben. He is a genealogy archive specialist in the research support branch of the customer services division of the National Archives building in Washington, D.C. He holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in history from Gettysburg College and Penn State University. Please help me welcome John. John Deeben: Thank you, Nancy. Okay, as Nancy said, we’re going to take a look today at a variety of records that were created by both the Union and Confederate War Departments that document the large amount of casualties that occurred during the war and especially those casualties that died. It’s probably an understatement to say that during the Civil War, America experienced death for the first time on an unprecedented scale, because nothing from out previous military experience came anywhere close to what we experienced in four years of Civil War. Does anybody happen to know what the official death count is for the Civil War? Any guess? 620,000 dead outright in four years of war. The last war that occurred within the memory of the Civil War generation was the Mexican War, and the total casualties from that war only amounted to about 13,000 of which only about 1,700 of those were actually battlefield deaths. The rest were deaths from other causes, so the country really wasn’t prepared for this scale of carnage that occurred during the Civil War. But I think it’s significant that as early as the Spring of 1862, when the unexpectedly high casualty rates came in from the battle of Shiloh, that both sides suddenly realized that this was going to be a different kind of war. It wasn’t going to be the three month adventure that most people thought it was going to be in 1861, but it was going to be a long, drawn-out war of attrition. And I think that realization set in at an early point in time because both sides took deliberate steps to document the casualties that resulted from the war. Prior to the war there were some basic army regulations and articles of war that stipulated the basic ways in which to document the deaths of both officers and men in the regular army. But some of the records that we’re going to look at go above and beyond that. And I think these are unique to the Civil War, as well, because we do not have these records for the earlier wars. We only have them for the Civil War. So let’s start by taking a look at how they generally documented deaths that occurred during combat. The first place you want to look for information about any soldier in the war who may have died are in the service records. And for the Union army, in record group 94, we have two different types of records: records for volunteer soldiers and for the regular army. Two very different types of service that were documented by the War Department in two different types of ways. The volunteer soldiers of course were the temporary soldiers who were called up specifically in response to the national emergency, whereas the regular army service was the career army. The regular army was in existence in peacetime as well as in war. So for the volunteer soldiers we have the carded service records. Most people who have done research at the National Archives are probably familiar with the compiled military service records. This is what this is in RG 94. These are the records that were actually created decades after the war ended beginning in the 1890’s by the War Department. And they were primarily compiled to help the War Department document service for military pension applications. And what they did is they went through all the existing records that the War Department had from the war, and they compiled or extracted information relating to every individual soldier that they came across. And they noted that information down on individual cards, and this became the compiled service record for each soldier. For the Union army we have compiled service records available for all the regiments that served from every northern state. And on microfilm we have those service records that are available from the the Union regiments from the border states, the western states and territories, and the southern states that supplied Union regiments. And every southern state except South Carolina did supply at least a handful of Union regiments during the course of the war. Most people are not familiar with that, but that did happen. And then for the regular army, the War Department maintained a series of registers of enlistments. And this is reproduced on microfilm publication M233. And the registers of enlistments basically give a succinct statement of every regular army soldier’s service from the beginning of his service to the end of his service. And if his service terminated in death, that will be noted in the registers. We have the service records available for the Confederate army as well. After the War Department was finished compiling service records for the Union army, around 1903 they compiled service records for the Confederate soldiers as well. And these are available in record group 109, which are the Confederate records. So there are compiled service records for every state in the Confederacy that supplied soldiers as well as units raised directly by the Confederate government which would have been equivalent to the Confederate regular army. We also have separate service records available for general and staff officers in the Confederate army. All of the Confederate service records from all of the states – and the other organizations – have been microfilmed. So there are separate publications for each state. There are also separate microfilm indexes for each state, as well as an overall comprehensive index for all Confederate soldiers. So if you’re interested in a particular state to research those service records, I would refer you to our published microfilm catalog to get the specific microfilm publications for those states. There are also listed – if you got this copy of the green handout – all the microfilm publications are also listed there as well for both Union and Confederate service records for every state. Okay, so we’ll look at some examples of where you can find the information about how these soldiers died in these records. This is the compiled service record for Colonel John W. McLane from the 83rd Pennsylvania. Most people are familiar with the 83rd because it was one of the regiments that helped defend Little Round Top at Gettysburg. It was the regiment right next in line to the 20th Maine on the second day of the battle. But here we see two cards from the service record of Colonel McLane. You can see they were both – the information was extracted from two different muster rolls that were compiled. One was from May and June of 1862, and the other muster role – the muster out roll from the regiment – was from September of 1864 when the regiment mustered out at the end of its initial three year enlistment before everybody reenlisted. Both of those rolls showed that Colonel McLane was killed in battle on June 27th, 1862. Now you notice a little discrepancy: the middle card shows that he was killed in the Battle of Chickahominy, while the end card shows that he was killed in the Battle of Gaines’s Mill. Sometimes you’ll find these little discrepancies in the records. It all depends on how the War Department clerks originally noted the information down. But it’s the same battle. Today we generally refer to it as the Battle of Gaines’s Mill. It was the third engagement of the Seven Days Battles that occurred during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign in Virginia. But every once in awhile you’ll find these little variant discrepancies. Also in the compiled service records for volunteers, there are personal papers sometimes filed with the service records. As the War Department was compiling these service records, if they came across a document that referred to an individual soldier, they usually filed that document with the service record. So a lot of times you’ll find the original enlistment papers for these soldiers. You’ll find maybe special orders that were written directly for these soldiers. Sometimes you’ll find court martial records. And in this case there’s a casualty sheet filed with Colonel McLane’s service record. At some point after his death, it looks like it was filled out in October of 1862, the War Department filled out this sheet documenting his death in battle. And it lists that he was killed in action on June 27th, 1862. But what’s interesting is what they cite as a source of their information. Over here you can see they wrote down Volume 2 of the Register of Deceased Soldiers, 1862. So here’s a very important clue that there are other War Department records that you can look at that also have this death information recorded. Here’s an example from the register of enlistments. It’s probably hard for you to see the actual writing, but each entry for a soldier spanned two pages in the register. The first page on the left usually gave your basic information about the enlisted soldier: his name, his date and place, where he enlisted, it will usually give a personal description – height, complexion, hair color, eye color, that sort of thing – his age, it may list where he was born, his civilian occupation, and so forth. What we’re interested in is on the second page in the remarks column, because here is where you’ll find any notations if a soldier died while in service. If we take a look at the second page we can see in a couple of examples, the first order in the top here, it lists that he died in November of 1862 at New Orleans. The soldier further down was killed in action on July 21st, 1861 at the First Battle of Bull Run. This soldier died in November 1861 at Sedalia, Missouri. And a little further down is another soldier who was killed in action in February of 1864 in Jacksonville, Florida. Now as I said the regular army soldiers do not have compiled military service records, so this is only one of two possible places where you’ll find information documented where these regular army soldiers died during the war. The other place is in this series. Regular army soldiers also had personal papers, but because they do not have compiled service records their personal papers were arranged separately by the War Department. But they do exist. And they’re pretty much identical to what I’ve already described that’s available in the compiled service records for volunteers. So you can find a variety of different types of papers. The second series that’s listed here, these final statements – this is a specific type of document that was originally filed with the personal papers, but at some point in time the War Department extracted them and arranged them separately. But these final statements are pretty much what they say they are. They are a record that documents the final statement of service for any individual soldier. And if the reason for his termination of service was by death for whatever reason, that will be documented in the record. And I’ll show you an example here in a second. This is just a typical type of record that you might find in the personal papers that relates to an individual soldier’s death. This happens to be an inventory of the effects for a soldier. This is for Lieutenant George Harrington of the 3rd U.S. Cavalry. And towards the top of the page here it indicates that he died in Memphis, Tennessee on August 21st, 1864 by gunshot wound to the head. And the table that appears in this part of the document, then, provides an accounting of all the personal items and clothing that was on his person at the time of his death. Here’s an example of what the final statement of service looks like. This is the document on the left. And the top portion of the document pretty much gives you the same types of information that you’ll find in the register of enlistments for the regular army soldiers. It will indicate where he was born, where he enlisted, his date of enlistment, again it will give you a personal description. And here where it says the reason for his discharge, in this case – this is for John D. Boyer of the 10th U.S. Infantry – his reason for his termination of service was death. And it further lists right below that that he died on October 19th, 1964 at the Lincoln General Hospital in Washington, D.C. by reason of inflammation of the lungs. A lot of times these final statements are accompanied by a record of death and interment, which is the document on the right. And this will give you a little bit more information. It indicates which ward of the hospital he was in at the time of his death, and a little further down if you look at the cause of death, again it says inflammation of the lungs, but right beneath it it also says that he was wounded through the right lung. So again this is actually a death occurring as the result of a wound from an unspecified engagement or skirmish. A lot of times you’ll see these two types of documents filed together in the personal papers. In addition to these types of records, we also have a lot of the original records that the compiled service records were based upon. And of particular interest to what we’re talking about today are the regimental records, in particular the regimental book records. These are the records that the regiments actually carried with them as they operated in the field on active campaigning. There are a lot of different types of regimental book records. There were order books, books of morning reports, account books, clothing accounts and things of that nature. But what we’re interested in are the descriptive books for the volunteer organizations. And these are also in RG 94. In here you’re going to find specific lists of each regiment that died during service. And in the individual descriptions for each member of the service you’ll also find information relating to their death if they died during service. This is an example from the descriptive book for the Company D of the 46th Pennsylvania. Towards the very beginning of the ledger you’ll find this register of deaths, which lists all the members of Company D who died during the war. It’s generally listed in chronological order from the date of each person’s death. And sometimes the amount of the information varies. If we look at the very first person listed here, his name was Amos M. Wenerich. He was the first member of the company to die during the war. And this information is kind of minimal. It just notes that he died January 31st, 1862 at Dam #6, and that he drowned. That’s all there is, and it’s kind of vague. We don’t really know where this happened. But if we go further back into the volume, to the section on the descriptive portion for each individual soldier, we can learn some more information. Again, each person’s entry spans two pages in the volume. So entry #76 is for Amos M. Wenerich. And the first page of the entry shows that he was 19 years old at the time when he enlisted. He was 5’6”, he had a ruddy complexion, brown eyes and sandy colored hair. He was originally from Dolphin, Pennsylvania, and he was a farmer in his civilian occupation. If we go to the second page, it shows that he enlisted on September 2nd of 1861 at Harrisburg for a term of three years. But then again in the remarks column for his entry, we get some more specific information about what happened to him. And here probably the adjunct of the regiment wrote down that he drowned in the lock at dam #6 on the Potomac River – and this was located near Hancock, Maryland – while on picket duty on the night of January 31st, 1862. So now we have a more rounded description of what happened to him on the night of his death. Apparently he was on picket duty, making his way back to his camp in the dark, and he fell into the river. As I said, he’s the first member of the company to die in the war. And apparently this must have affected the company to some extent, because the clerk who wrote this information also noted on his entry that, “He fell in the line of duty, a mild, inoffensive boy, always ready and willing, intelligent and pious. In fact, a model soldier. Long will his memory be cherished.” So it’s kind of sad, but also kind of a nice sentiment that just happened to be recorded down here in the record book. I should also point out, backtracking just a minute, his older brother John J. Wenerich also served with him in the company, as well. And he’s listed right below, #77. And John Wenerich also died in the war, as well. If you read his entry in the remarks column, it says that he was killed in action at Gettysburg on July 3rd, 1863, “by the bursting of a shell from our batteries.” So here he was killed by friendly artillery fire. We also have descriptive books for the regular army regiments that served in the war. These are part of Record Group 391, which are the records of the U.S. regular army mobile units. And we have them available for all branches of the army that served during the war: the artillery, cavalry, and infantry, and also some specialized units as well. And all of the regiments that served during the war, their records are all arranged together. So they’re very easy to search. I haven’t mentioned anything about descriptive books for the Confederate army because they are very few and far between. A few of them do exist, and they’re in record group 109, but it’s very rare that you may find a record book for a specific regiment that you’re looking for. But at the end of the lecture I’ll mention the finding aids that we have available, and they are listed in the finding aid. So if you’re at all interested at any time to find out what descriptive books we have for the Confederate army, they’re listed in the finding aid. Okay, we also have casualty lists that were compiled during the war itself. Two main series of records in this category: we have casualty lists for the regiments themselves that were compiled usually immediately after the war or after the battle or engagement that each regiment was in, and we also have casualty lists for higher levels of organization for the Union army including Army Corps, armies, and departments. The regimental ones are usually arranged by unit, usually by state and within each state by unit. And the army – the higher-level casualty lists are arranged by the corps records first, followed by the territorial commands and then the whole army groups. There’s also a series of indexes available - these were actually created by the War Department, so these are not NARA-created indexes – they’re part of the accession records as well. Sometimes you’ll find that the War Department was actually pretty thorough in creating indexes for its own records. You come across a lot of these in different record groups for the army records, so they were pretty thorough about that. Here’s an example of what these casualty sheets look like. Again we’re back with the 83rd Pennsylvania. The casualty sheet on the left here is for June 22nd, 1862 for the Battle of Gaines’s Mill. And you can see that the information is arranged by type of casualty with the killed first, followed by the wounded which go on to the second page. And within each category the names are arranged by rank. So the very first name we find on the list, once again, is Colonel John W. McLane. The document on the right is more of a quarterly compilation of casualties that was sustained by the regiment during the first three months of the Overland Campaign of Virginia in 1864 from May until the end of June. This information is arranged slightly differently, you can see all the types of casualties – the killed, wounded, and missing – are listed side-by-side so you can kind of compare. And then within each casualty list the names are arranged by company. We also have casualty lists for the Confederate army. And these have been microfilmed, they are available in publication M836. And these include not only the original casualty lists, but also the narrative reports usually referred to as after-action reports sometimes, that were also compiled by the officers of the regiments after the battles or engagements. And a lot of these narrative reports you will also find published in the official records of the War of the Rebellion. The unusual thing about the microfilm publication, though, is that the casualty lists are arranged by the state in which the military operations took place. And then they’re arranged by the name of the battle or the engagement, which makes it a little bit tricky to search for a list for a specific regiment. So if you’re looking for this casualty list for Ramseur’s Brigade from the Gettysburg Campaign, you have to scroll through the microfilm until you get to the section for Pennsylvania. Then you have to look for all the lists for the Battle of Gettysburg. And then you can look through the different lists that are available for the different unit organizations that were in the Army of Northern Virginia. And in these types of lists, again the information is arranged a little bit differently as well. The names are arranged initially by company, and then by type of casualty. So you’ll have Company A, killed, wounded, and missing. Company B, killed, wounded, and missing. So for these reports a lot of times you’ll have to read down through the whole report to get an overall picture of all of the members of the regiment who died during the battle. They’re not all listed together in this instance. And here’s just an example of what the narrative reports look like. This is the report written for Fraser’s Battery from McLaw’s Division, Longstreet’s Corps, Gettysburg. And it gives a general accounting of the battery’s activities during the course of the whole battle. But over here on page two, in this section of the paragraph, is where the author of the report actually lists the casualties that were sustained by the battery on the second day of the battle. And again he does list everybody by name, all those killed, wounded, and missing. And you can also get a little detailed information about the damage that was sustained by the equipment in the battery, and it also gives an accounting of the horses of the battery that were killed or maimed during the course of the battle. During the war, the War Department also went about compiling some general death registers. And these are the records that I would argue are probably unique to the war, because we do not have these types of death registers for earlier wars or for the wars that came after the Civil War. So when I mentioned earlier that they went about trying to make a deliberate accounting of all the deaths that occurred during the course of the war, this is where that information was likely recorded. And you can see, as I list the different types of series, it can get very detailed in the information that they attempted to capture, because we have a separate series of registers just for volunteer soldiers. And these are arranged chronologically by year and then alphabetically by name. So if you’ll recall back in the casualty sheet for Colonel McLane it showed that his information was taken from the register of deceased soldiers for 1862, this is where that information was probably taken from. This is where those volumes are located. There’s also a separate series of registers just for the regular army, and these are arranged by year, and then alphabetically or chronologically. The volumes vary. There’s also a separate series of registers for deaths that occurred just in the naval service. There’s a second set of series of registers of death for volunteers, as well. And these are arranged by state, and then by name of the deceased. So if you have difficulty finding information about a soldier in the initial series that I pointed out, you may find them in this series as well. There’s also a separate series of registers of deaths just for U.S. colored troops during the war. And there’s even an undescribed series, that’s what the UD stands for, which is kind of a consolidation of information, because you see it includes information about the regular army volunteers as well as the naval service. So this was also compiled at some time by the War Department. All of these different types of death registers more or less document the same types of information. Sometimes the arrangement of the information will vary, but it usually includes the soldier’s name, his rank, his unit affiliation, if he was in the infantry it will be his company and his regiment. In this example from the naval service it gives the name of the vessel that he served on. And then it will always give you his cause of death, whether it was killed in action, from wounds, from disease, or an accident of some nature. And it will give you the date of death and the place of death. And then usually at the end there is a remarks column that can contain any types of miscellaneous information. Sometimes I’ve seen notations indicating where the soldiers were buried after their death, sometimes there are notations indicating what happened to their personal belongings, how they were disposed of after the individual deceased. But it’s usually a catch-all column for whatever information the clerks wanted to put in there. Here’s an example from the register of death for the U.S. colored troops, and again it’s pretty much the same types of information with the name, rank, unit information, then cause, date, and place of death. The Confederates, to a lesser extent, also created some general death registers as well. There are two main series available. There’s one set of registers of deaths in effect that were compiled by the adjunct in the Inspector General’s office in the Confederate War Department. It’s probably not comprehensive, because it only includes two volumes for the entire span of the war. So it’s probably not comprehensive. There are also a second set of registers that were compiled by the second auditor’s office of the Confederate Treasury Department. Now there’s some speculation that the treasury records were compiled by the Confederate government with the view towards eventually adjudicating veteran claims for Confederate veterans after the war. But of course the war ended, the Confederacy lost, so that whole point became moot. But those records are still – they survived the war, and they’re part of Record Group 109. Okay, let’s move on to take a little bit more in-depth look at types of records that were created to document deaths that occurred in military hospitals during the course of the war. Again, the first place you want to look for any medical information, and especially for the soldiers who may have died in-hospital, are in the carded medical records for the Union army. There are not any corresponding carded medical records for the Confederate soldiers that I am aware of. But for the Union army, these are very similar to the compiled military service records. They were created in the same way. The War Department went through all the existing hospital records that it had in its possession, and it extracted information about individual soldiers and noted them down on cards. And you can see from the different series that they did a pretty thorough job of it. There are separate medical cards for the regular Army, Marine Corps, volunteers, the rest of the naval service, and even some specialized service as well. And here’s basically what they look like. These are the medical cards for Private Clement D. Cooper of Company D, 31st Iowa. The first card here on the left shows that he was taken on board the U.S. hospital steamer City of Memphis on March 7th of 1863 to be transported to the general hospital in Memphis. The next two cards show that he was admitted to that hospital, which was also referred to as the Gayosa General Hospital in Memphis, on March 10th, 1863. And both of those cards also note that he died two days later on March 12th, 1863. The middle card also indicates that his condition at the time, his reason for being admitted, was that he had chronic diarrhea. And this is also likely the cause of his death as well. And of course for the Union records we also have the original hospital registers that were used to create the carded medical records as well. And a lot of these records include specific death registers that were compiled by the individual hospitals. The series that we have for the military hospitals is a huge series, about 11,000 volumes. And it encompasses military hospitals that were stationary, that were set up in specific states during the war, hospitals that were attached to specific army corps and military departments, and also the field hospitals that were attached to individual regiments. Their records are also in here as well. There are indexes that go along with these records, but they are not name indexes. So unfortunately it’s not easy to search for a name, but if you know from looking at the medical cards what hospital a soldier may have been admitted to, in the indexes you will find the types of records that are available for that hospital. And in addition to the specific death registers or general registers of patients often times you’ll find registers of surgical procedures, registers of prescriptions written for patients, and things of that nature. All different types of medical records. This is an example of the death register that was maintained by the Gayosa General Hospital in Memphis, and if you look at the second name on the list we find Clement Cooper, whose carded medical records we saw. So this is the original source that his information was extracted from to create those carded medical records. And again, it shows his date of death over here in this column. And the center part of the volume here, this grid, is kind of an inventory of effects. So it lists what personal possessions were on him, what clothing he had at the time of his death. And over here in the remarks column, it also specifically notes that his effects were turned over to his father S.P. Cooper after his death. We also do have, to a lesser extent, hospital records for Confederate hospitals that were maintained during the war. And some of these hospitals also have death registers. Going through the finding aid, this is a list of hospitals that I was able to identify that had specific death registers among their records. And again these are in Record Group 109, and they’re very similar in nature to the other death registers that we’ve talked about already. They provide your basic information, including the soldier’s name, his rank, his unit information, and his cause and date of death. This is an example of the death register from the Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, which was probably the most well-known Confederate hospital during the war. In addition to the death registers, a, lot of times you can find death information filed with other types of hospital records as well. And these include, as I mentioned before, the general registers of patients. Sometimes you can find death information recorded in there as well. And a lot of the hospitals also had records detailing the general disposition of patients. So in addition to those who died, you’ll find information about patients who were transferred to other hospitals, patients who were returned to duty, who were furloughed, who were discharged, what have you. All of that information is consolidated together, including those patients who died. And they were maintained separately from the death registers. And the listing here is just a sampling of the Confederate hospitals where I was able to identify those types of records. So for example, here’s a list of patients – this was partly patients who were returned to duty, sent to private quarters, transferred, furloughed, and died from the General Hospital Number 8 in Richmond. This is the section of that volume that lists just the patients who died while they were in the hospital. And you can see this particular list is kind of minimal. It doesn’t give you anything other than the soldier’s name and his unit information. It doesn’t provide his cause of death or anything like that. This example is a little more detailed. This is a record of the disposition of cases for two hospitals in Raleigh, North Carolina. And they include both listings of soldiers who died as well as soldiers who were discharged on surgeon’s certificates. And the page shown here just happens to list just those soldiers who died while they were in the hospital. Sometimes in the Confederate records you can also find information about Union patients, as well. And of course these patients were prisoners of war. A lot of the Confederate prisons that were located in urban centers such as Libby Prison in Richmond, some of the times they did not have their own hospitals attached to the prison, so they had to make use of the general hospitals that were located in Richmond. So in this example here, for Hospital Number 21 in Richmond, there are actually quite a few series of records that include information about both Confederate and Union patients. And even though I don’t have any examples from the Union hospital records, it’s quite likely that you’ll also find the same situation where you can find information about Confederate patients in the Union hospital records as well. Here’s an example of this, it’s the general register of patients from General Hospital Number 21 in Richmond. And you can see it’s mostly Confederate patients but there are a handful of Union patients as well, and they’re all indicated with a blue checkmark. Somebody went through and identified them that way. And here’s a specific death register for Union soldiers that was compiled by the General Hospital at Danville, Virginia. Now at Danville there also was a military prison, and the prison did have its own hospital. But here’s an instance where they were also treating prisoners of war in the general hospital as well, because this register is part of the records of the general hospital, not the records of the prison hospital. So they maintained a separate register just for those patients. And you’ll see again, it gives you the basic types of information that we’ve talked about that you can find in the general death registers. Here it does give you some pretty good information showing his complaint, or the cause of death, and the date of death. These even give you the month, the day, and the hour of the death. A little more detail than we’ve seen before. And this kind of segues into our last major subtopic that we’re going to look at: how deaths were documented in military prisons during the war. In June of 1862, the War Department established the Office of the Commissary General of Prisoners. He was responsible for compiling information about Union prisoners of war, as well as supervising the handling and treatment of Confederate prisoners of war. So during the course of the war there actually was a regular exchange of information across lines relating to prisoners of war. And through this process, the Commissary General was able to compile a series of registers of federal prisoners of war who died while in confinement in Confederate prisons. And these volumes are available in Entry 36 in RG 249. And there’s also a separate, supplementary series of roles and reports relating to deceased federal soldiers who died in Confederate prisons. And again these are very similar to the other types of death registers that were maintained. These were not in volume form, these were just compiled lists that were put together. But still it show you the prisoner’s name, his rank, his unit, his general place of death, the cause, and date. And in the last column it shows you whether or not the prisoner died while in the prison camp itself or in one of the Confederate military hospitals. In this case, most of these who died in camp were related to Camp Oglethorpe, which was located in Macon, Georgia. It was the second largest Confederate prison camp in Georgia after Andersonville. The Commissary General of Prisoners also maintained records relating to paroled Union prisoners of war. These soldiers were kind of in a state of limbo. When they were paroled from confederate prisons until they were formally exchanged, they could not go home, they could not go back to their unit. As I said, they were kind of in limbo. So the Commissary General of Prisoners established parole camps to keep these men until they were formally exchanged. And these camps had their own hospitals, so the hospitals maintained registers of these parolees who died while they were in hospital as well. So we have these registers in RG 249, as well as supplemental lists of Union prisoners who died while they were in these parole camps. And again they’re very similar in nature to the other death registers. What’s interesting here is that it provides not only the information about their death – in this example the date of death occurs over here in the last column – but these records also give the date and place when the prisoner was captured, and it also provides the date and place when they were released on parole. So there it gives you two additional levels of information about these soldiers that we didn’t have before. We also have some records, to a much lesser extent, relating to Confederate prisons. And these are also in RG 249. Now you would think – these are records created by Confederate prison authorities, so they should be Confederate records. You think they should be in Record Group 109 with the other Confederate records. But because they contain information about Union prisoners, these volumes were turned over to the Commissary General of Prisoners after the war. And that is why they are now part of Record Group 249, because they stayed with the records of his office even though they were technically Confederate records. But in this case we do have some records relating to Confederate prisons, and some of those records to have death registers. Entry 45 in RG 249 includes death registers compiled by the Danville military hospital that I mentioned earlier. And this is an example of what the ledger looks like. And again, it’s basically your same type of information that we’ve discussed that was recorded in these ledgers. And of course, because Andersonville was the largest and probably the most notorious Confederate prison camp during the war, we have the Andersonville records. And those records have been microfilmed in publication M1303. So in this microfilm series you can find the original death and burial registers that were maintained by the prison. There are also some incomplete transcripts of these records that were compiled by the War Department after the war. And then there are also some miscellaneous burial lists of prisoners that were prepared by federal soldiers who were at Andersonville. So there’s very different levels of information that provides different details. From about February to October of 1864, the original register of prisoners for Andersonville also served simultaneously as the death register. And this is the copy of that register that was prepared by the War Department after the war. You can see here somebody made a notation, “This register was kept by rebel authorities.” That’s a pretty good indication that the Confederates did not create this particular record book, because they would not have referred to themselves as rebel authorities. But on the second page in this column here, you can find general notations about prisoners at the camp who died while they were in confinement. But then after October of 1864, the Andersonville authorities began compiling a separate death register. And that’s an example from this page from that register as well. The Commissary General of Prisoners also compiled some general death registers relating to prisoners of war. And again this kind of an unusual juxtaposition going on here, because these are Union records that were created by Union authorities. But because the information is about Confederate prisoners, these records were placed with the rest of the Confederate collection of records. That’s why they’re now part of Record Group 109. But they’re technically Union records created by Union military authorities. And these have been included in a separate microfilm publication, as well. These are in M598, which are selected records of the War Department relating to Confederate prisoners of war. So there are three general series of death registers that are included in this publication. One is the series of registers that was compiled by the Office of the Commissary General of Prisoners, the same guy we’ve been talking about. There’s also a separate set of registers that was compiled by the Surgeon General’s office of the U.S. Army. He used his own collection methods to extract information, and he maintained a separate set of registers. And there’s also a third set of registers that includes information about both Confederate soldiers and sailors who were prisoners of war during the war. And again here’s an example of the death registers that was compiled by the Surgeon General’s office, and it includes not only information about place and date of death, but also about the place and date where these individuals were captured. We also have, in addition to the general registers that were compiled by the Union authorities, records relating to the individual Union Union military prisons as well. And some of those prisons, the ones that are listed here, maintained specific death registers. Now again, these are Union records from Union prisons, but they are now part of the Confederate collection of records because the information they contain relates to Confederate prisoners. So most of these prisons here, everybody’s probably familiar with the most well-known prisons in the North including Camp Chase, Fort Delaware, Elmira, which was probably the Northern equivalent of Andersonville, and Johnson’s Island as well. All of these different camps maintained specific death registers. And here’s an example of a death register from the the Elmira prison. And again, as I mentioned before, it gives information not only about the date and place of the prisoner’s death, but also the date and place of his capture. And just as we saw for the hospital records, in addition to the specific death registers for the different military prisons, you can also find death information interfiled with other types of prison records as well. And as an example, for the prison at Alton, Illinois I just mentioned that they maintained a specific death register. But if you also look at the general registers of prisoners, you can find death information noted in there for individual prisoners. They also maintained records relating to the general disposition of prisoners, just as we saw records relating to the general disposition in patients. So the Alton prison has specific rules relating to prisoners who not only died while they were in confinement, but prisoners who were released, transferred, paroled, and so forth. And they also have a specific series of records related to morning reports on prisoners which kind of provide statistical information about the number number of prisoners who died on any given day, depending on the report. And here’s an example from the general register of prisoners from the Alton prison in Illinois. And as you read down through the register you can the specific notation for the individual soldiers who actually died while they were in confinement. So their information is interfiled along with the other prisoners who were otherwise – it looks like most of these other ones were transferred at some point to City Point, and there was one here who was released on oath. The final record I want to point out is a general compilation relating to Confederate deaths and burials. By the end of the 19th century, around 1898 or so, reconciliation between the North and the South had progressed to the point that President William McKinley decided that the federal government should finally take responsibility for documenting Confederate dead. Up until this time they had been pretty much ignored by the federal government. From the time that the war was going on until decades after, Union dead were very carefully identified and eventually moved to the national cemeteries. The whole national cemetery movement emerged from the war. But the Confederate dead were virtually ignored. They were left to lie on the field where they died, where they were temporarily buried by the burial details that went through after engagements. And they were deliberately ignored. But that changed at the end of the nineteenth century. And then in 1906, Congress finally established the Office of the Commissioner for marking graves of Confederate dead. And that office went to work to actually identify the Confederate dead who died during the war and where their burials were located. So they actually went through all of the hospital and prison records that we just talked about and they extracted all of the information relating to deceased Confederate soldiers. And then they actually went up North to the locations where these hospitals and prisons were located, and they attempted to identify the specific graves for all these soldiers. And in 1912 they published this report, which is the Register of Confederate Soldiers and Sailors who Died in Federal Prisons and Military Hospitals in the North. And it gives as comprehensive and accounting as was possible at the time of all the Confederate soldiers and sailors who died in these locations in the North. So it’s pretty thorough and it’s a pretty valuable source for any type of information that you’re doing or any research you’re looking for for Confederate dead. So I recommend using this. And the whole report in its entirety has been reproduced on microfilm in publication M918. Audience Member: Question? John Deeben: Yes? Audience Member: It’s only doing prisons and hospitals? Not if they just died in battle? John Deeben: Right. As I said, it went through the hospital and prison records, and then it attempted to locate where those soldiers were physically buried at those locations. So if a soldier died in battle and was buried someplace else, he may or may not be noted in these registers unless that information was recorded in the other registers – in the hospital or prison records. It’s hard to say. And finally, these are the finding aids that are available for these types of records that we’ve been talking about. These are all available for use in our finding aids office downtown. All of the records that we’ve been talking about are located at Archives I downtown. As far as I know, only the finding aid PI 101 for the Confederate records – that’s the only one that’s still in print. So it’s still available as a free publication for any researchers who might be interested in having that. For the finding aid for Record Group 94, I do know that the research support branch does have a reproduction copy available. So they can make photocopies from it for anybody who’s interested in that publication. But I’m not certain about these two here. But for anybody who’s interested in these two publications, we can find out whether or not that’s available to be photocopied or not. And finally, if you’re interested in any supplemental reading I would highly recommend these two publications. Both of them just came out last year. Drew Faust, This Republic of Suffering, and Mark Schantz, Awaiting the Heavenly Country. Both of these books take the whole experience of the American Civil War and place it within the larger context of America’s Victorian culture of death. So it gives you an overall historical context for the death that was experienced by the United States during the course of the Civil War. These two books came out within a few months of each other, but I think the Faust book came out first. So I think that it kind of grabbed the spotlight away from the Schantz book to some extent. But they both approach the topic from slightly different angles, so I would recommend reading both of them. And if you have any general questions at all about anything we’ve talked about. Yes? The question is some of the documents show that a soldier’s individual belongings were returned to the families at some point. But was there any other – Audience Member: Medical counseling? John Deeben: Oh. Medical counseling in the 19th century was probably nonexistent. Any other benefits given to the families of the deceased? No. Pretty much no. If families wanted to recover the bodies of their dead relatives, they pretty much had to do it on their own and at their own expense. If you read accounts of the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, they are just loaded with examples of families who travelled both down from the North and up from the South looking for the temporary graves of their fallen relatives. Audience Member: So they didn’t have any type of discretion? John Deeben: Discretion? Audience Member: Did they even have a choice in where they got buried? John Deeben: Unless the family wanted to take the remains back to their home town, they pretty much were either set aside in a local cemetery, and then later transferred to a national cemetery. But unless they wanted to take them home, there was probably no other say in what happened to the remains. Yes sir? Audience Member: You showed images, actual pages from registers. Is that reproduction capability available to researchers? John Deeben: There are some … Audience Member: Can researchers copy, image, whatever? John Deeben: It depends on the size of the volume. There are some scanning capabilities that are possible for some of the records, but I’m not sure if some of the oversized records … It may be possible to make special arrangements with the reference archivist to perhaps scan some of the larger ones if you want a specific page from one of the volumes. You’d probably have to talk to one of the reference archivists to see if something could be arranged. Audience Member: Did you make the actual images yourself? John Deeben: Yes. All the scanned documents we saw here I did myself. Yes? Audience Member: I noticed for a number of the entries you have the Record Group number but no entry number. What do we need in order to find that? John Deeben: Well the only series – some of the Confederate series do not have entry numbers. And that’s because the War Department, when they got these records, they started to arrange them following their own arrangement, because the view was towards eventually publishing them as part of the official records. So they assigned them chapter and volume numbers, and those series still have those chapter and volume designations. If you look through the finding aid, you’ll see a series and it will give you a chapter number and a volume number. Some of those series that were not designated were assigned traditional entry numbers, so you can find those as well. But if you’re using the finding aid, looking at a specific series, just note down the chapter and volume number and the records can be pulled just as easily as those with regular entry numbers. You had a question? Audience Member: You talked about a very huge group of field records. And if we do have the name and the regiment of our ancestor, and we’re fairly certain of which hospital he was in, is it possible to look at the original? And if so, is there a way to call in advance? Because I would imagine it might take them a pretty long time to find it. John Deeben: Yeah, there are some internal finding aids that the staff have that list what hospitals we have and what records we have for those hospitals. So somebody can probably at least do a preliminary check to see what records are available for a specific hospital that you might be interested in and what types of records are available for that hospital. So yeah, you can always ask and see what they can do for you. As far as I know, all the hospital records are available to look at. Nothing’s restricted or anything like that. So if the record exists for a specific hospital, you should be able to request it and look at it. Audience Member: Because sometimes the microfilm of a particular page is just bad. John Deeben: Right. Well as far as I know, none of the hospital records that we’ve talked about have been microfilmed. They’re all in their original textual form. Audience Member: And not on Ancestry.com? John Deeben: No. Yes sir? Audience Member: There was one record for a soldier who died at Lincoln Hospital. What was that hospital named after? John Deeben: Well I imagine it was named after President Lincoln. Audience Member: So back then they named things after living presidents? John Deeben: I would assume. I can’t say for certain, but that would be my assumption. Audience Member: They still name things after living presidents. John Deeben: Yeah, most likely it was named after President Lincoln. That’s what happens sometimes, I guess. Any other questions? Audience Member: Is there a copy of your presentation? John Deeben: I didn’t make any printouts of the PowerPoint slides for this presentation, if that's what you're referring to. The handout that should have been part of the – that went along with the evaluation form pretty much lists all of the specific series in the Record Groups that we’ve been talking about. And there are probably some additional things in here that I didn’t even touch on in the slides, because there’s such an enormous amount of records available for some of these types of records. But they all should be listed in the handout. Alright, thank you very much. Nancy Fortna: Thank you, John. It’s very helpful to know the various records available for researching Civil War dead. I want to thank you all for coming, and if you would all please fill out your evaluation forms and leave them on the back table, we would really appreciate it. Thanks.