How to Locate Military Records of Civil War Veterans
During the Civil War, 1861 to 1865, about 2.8 million men and a few hundred women served in the Union and Confederate armies. Whether you are researching a Union or a Confederate veteran, begin with the soldier's compiled military service record and the pension application file. A secondary resource is the Record of Events, a kind of diary kept my each company, which described its movements and activities.
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Instructions
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Determine the military unit to which the veteran belonged. Then consult Compiled Records Showing Service of Military Units in Volunteer Union Organizations, or Compiled Records Showing Service of Military Units in Confederate Organizations. These records are available on microfilm; consult the Civil War Records page of the National Archives website (find a link in References) to find out the microfilm roll number that contains the records of the veteran in question. On the National Archives website, you can send a request to purchase or rent the appropriate roll of microfilm.
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Consult the General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934, which is also available on the National Archives website. Many Union soldiers, their widows and their children applied for a government pension, and many of these applications include information about the soldier's activities during the war, including how he was wounded or killed. The pension records are available on microfilm at various libraries across the United States. The National Archives website lists the locations. These records are also available for a fee on Ancestry.com
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Apply in person at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., to examine any Civil War records that have not yet been microfilmed. Requests submitted between 8:45 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. may be viewed that same day.
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Tips & Warnings
The National Archive's Microfilm Publication M1845 contains records of approximately 166,000 gravestones provided between the years ca. 1879-1903 by the United States government for Union veterans of the Civil War. The records include the deceased soldier's name, the date of his death, his rank at the end of the war, the company and regiment in which he served, the name of the cemetery where he lies buried, the city, county and state where the cemetery is located and the name of the contractor who carved the headstone.
The United States government did not pay pensions to Confederate veterans; those pensions were paid by the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Confederate pension files are not kept at the National Archives, but are available at various libraries and archives across the South. Find a link in References.
