National Archives Research

[btownguy]

I’m probably will be at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland in February for some research. I’m familiar with the finding aides for some World War Two research I’ve done, but is anyone familiar with ones related to the civil war? Primarily with clothing issues and returns and quartermaster reports.

any help is appreciated.

[Don Dixon]

Other than diplomatic records, most Civil War period stuff is at main Archives downtown. College Park doesn't even have copies of the Archives Civil War microfilm like the Compiled Military Service Records. Be sure College Park has what you want.

[rmilstead]

Don's comment is correct. I once waisted a day going to the College Park office to find the same was true,

The original question was imprecise. Are you looking for CS or Federal information? If Confederate everything is in RG109 and much of what isn't available through fold3 access is in the Microfilm publications which are cataloged for that record group although depending upon the things you are interested in specific answers may be buried QM correspondence files or general orders, etc. Some really significant stuff only exists in the original (paper) files. For example, there is a file (multiple boxes of original AQM issue forms) which does give specifics of what was issued by the AQMs. I tried to go through just one of those and gave up after about an hour because it was totally disorganized (jumbled up actually) such that whether it was filed by AQM name, date sequence, or Regiment was totally unclear! I felt that without literally spending hours going through it I wouldn't find anything useful. Some of those like the RCB "Shipping Book" are all in one place but are very voluminous and take a lot of time to go through.

Federal information is even worse in some ways which is surprising. Personnel related information such as service records are generally neither online (a few are on fold3 for states with both US and CS soldiers) but are not on Microfilm either. You have to request them individually and go through them one at a time. Company and regimental books are available, in general, and the research staff in the Research Center can probably help you get the ones (original books not microfilm) you are interested in. My one experience in trying to get clothing issue documents for a specific Regiment ended with nada because they couldn't locate them and believed that hadn't never been turned in at the end of the war by the state's Adjutant General. QM records are scattered in various Correspondence files listed in the Record group catalog (primarily RG 92 for QM stuff). Again, the staff may be able to assist you in locating what you are interested in.

Realize that if what you are looking for is only available as original documents instead of as Microfilm publications, you will need to work from the document study room (I forget the actual name) on the second floor and the documents need to be ordered for you to look at. In many cases as I describe above, they will be in file boxes mixed up with other similar ones that are NOT necessarily organized in any specific order. You will need to request specific boxes or files that may or may not have what you are looking for and typically you need to order from the Research Center and then wait for them to be delivered to the second-floor room to look at them. About thee cycles in a day is the best you can expect.

To do research at the Archives you must get a Researcher ID card before starting and taking an online test to verify that you understand the Archives rules and procedures. Most people who do serious research there expect to be there at least a couple of days and often, as much as a week. The real pros bring electronic scanners so that they can scan documents of interest directly themselves because your other options will be either taking notes on their supplied paper with their supplied pencils or using their copy machines which gets to be expensive. There are other restrictions I won't list now. The staff throughout the facility really makes every effort to help researchers and are very friendly. It is, however, a guarded Government facility so your conduct is supervised.

I wish you luck in your search, The material you can find is often very illuminating and educational.

Dick Milstead
The Company of Military Historians
Liberty Rifles