The North Carolina Troops Index is Now Online!

Back in October, I let my readers know that the The North Carolina Office of Archives and History had released the latest compilation of North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, Volume 18.  The full set, when completed, will comprise of 20 volumes. Each volume is available for sale from the NC Historical Publications Shop for $50.00 each.

This compilation was started in 1961 “with the purpose of researching, compiling, and publishing service records for every North Carolinian who served in the Civil War.” The rosters are arranged numerically by regiment or battalion an dthen alphabetically by company and include histories on each unit.

Information on soldiers at the time of enlistment include:

·         County of birth

·         Residence

·         Age

·         Occupation

Information on soldiers during service include:

·         Promotions

·         Whether he was wounded, captured, or killed

·         Whether he deserted or died of disease

The best news so far is that now there is a master cumulative INDEX available for the first 18 volumes! And it’s online!

The index contains the volume and page number for every soldier listed – for his individual service record and for everywhere else he is mentioned. It does not contain company and regiment information, but does contain a cross-reference tab for those hard to spell names.

Here is a screenshot of the first page you come to when accessing The Index. It contains the instructions on how to search for your ancestor: (Click on the photos to make them bigger)

This is what a list of search results looks like when I searched for my ancestor’s surname of Godwin:

This is what the Cross-Reference looks like for the surname Godwin:

  

Who knew there were so many variations on the Godwin and Goodwin surname?

Check it out for yourself!

Copies of The Roster are held at the following locations near Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill:

Duke University, UNC, Meredith College, NCSU, Peace College; Durham Public Library North Carolina Collection, Orange County (Main Library), Olivia Raney Library, and State Library of North Carolina.

Digitization of the “North Carolina Troops” index was made possible by a joint project between the NC Historical Publications and the NC Department of Cultural Resources Information Technology Application team.