Pennsylvania State Archives: Civil War Muster Rolls

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Project Conservator Lindsay Bergen pieces together
the Muster Out Roll of Co. K of the 71st Regiment.
Photo courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives.

Pennsylvania State Archives:

Pennsylvania Civil War Muster Rolls

North Third and Forster Streets

Harrisburg, PA

Website:  Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission: Civil War Records at the Pennsylvania State Archives

The Pennsylvania State Archives

The Treasure:  A wealth of important historical information is preserved on the Pennsylvania Civil War Muster Out Rolls, which record key details on approximately 362,000 soldiers from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania who served in the Civil War.

Accessibility:  Information on how to research the Civil War documents at the Pennsylvania State Archives is available at the web page Civil War Records at the Pennsylvania State Archives. The Civil War Muster Rolls are being scanned by Ancestry.com and are anticipated to be accessible online by late summer 2013.

Archivist Rich Saylor in the archives
tower stack area with the 135 cartons
of Muster Out Rolls before treatment.
Photo courtesy of the
Pennsylvania State Archives.

Background:  As the Civil War came to a close in 1865, the Pennsylvania Adjutant General’s Office confronted a flood of paper from the field. The Adjutant General’s Office had responsibility for much of the paperwork of war, covering Muster In Rolls (documenting the entry of soldiers into service), Alphabetical Rolls, Lists of Deserters, and Muster Out Rolls (documenting the status of soldiers at the completion of their service). These were the state’s databases, prepared and organized by hand. Many of the Muster Out Rolls date from the war’s end, as companies moved through the business of disbanding.

Ultimately, the Pennsylvania Adjutant General’s Office collected over 2,500 muster-out rolls, recording the exit status of approximately 362,000 soldiers. Only New York State contributed more Union soldiers to the war effort than Pennsylvania. A number of Pennsylvanians became prominent leaders in the cause. Noted generals from Pennsylvania include George Meade, George B. McClellan, Winfred Scott Hancock, John Fulton Reynolds, John F. Hartranft, and John W. Geary. But the Muster Out Rolls are egalitarian—they studiously document the status of the legendary Civil War heroes alongside the common soldiers and even the deserters.

A typical muster roll, before treatment:  Note the damage
on the folds that were mended with pressure-sensitive tapes.
Photo courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives.

As the companies disbanded, the field clerks gathered the information, including the status of company members who were missing or dead. The Adjutant General’s Office provided the oversize forms—unfolding to more than three feet in width and two feet in height. Under the pre-printed masthead, the officers and clerks would fill in the information on the ruled lines. The status of dozens of soldiers could be recorded on each document. Notes provide tantalizing information, now deeply valued by today’s historians and genealogists:  “prisoner at Andersonville,” “wounded at Chancellorsville,” “recovering in hospital,” “deserted,” “lost,” or “died at Antietam.”

For the first half-century of their existence, the Muster Out Rolls were valued primarily for very practical reasons, such as verifying pensions and veteran’s claims. Subsequently, historians and genealogists continued the high level of demand. Time after time, the documents were unfolded then refolded, becoming blemished with dirt and grime. Losses started to occur along the weakening folds. Well-meaning office workers applied highly acidic pressure-sensitive tapes to hold the sheets together. Historians and genealogists loved the accurate and color detail in the documents, but the paper itself was literally falling apart.

Conservator Joan Irving at the Conservation Center for
Art and Historic Artifacts with State Archivist David Haury
and an artillery regiment Muster Out Roll.
Photo courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives.

Notes from the Editor:  With funding from Save America’s Treasures and the Pennsylvania General Assembly, the Pennsylvania Muster Out Rolls have received state-of-the-art treatment and rehousing. More than 1,000 of the documents—the ones judged to be in the worst condition—came for treatment to the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) where I work. For more than five years, our conservators and technicians had the privilege to work on this monumental project.

The treatment required surface cleaning, washing, mending, flattening, lining, and encapsulating. All the old acidic mending tapes had to be removed, sometimes loosening fragments of paper that had to be refitted into the document like in a jigsaw puzzle. In 2009, CCAHA Book Technician Valeria Kremser (now Book Conservation Technician at the University of Pennsylvania) produced an informative short video, The Pennsylvania Civil War Muster Roll Project. The time-lapse section offers a nice insight into the challenging work of piecing the documents back together. Multiply this one treatment by more than a thousand and you’ll have some idea of the scope of this work.

Above:  Before treatment image of a folded Muster Roll.
Below:  After treatment image of the same Muster Roll, now unfolded.
Photo courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives.

Other Recommended Sites:  In the Pennsylvania State Capitol complex in Harrisburg, you can visit the Pennsylvania State Archives and the neighboring State Museum of Pennsylvania, and then take a guided tour of the historic State Capitol Building itself.

The Pennsylvania State Archives.
Photo courtesy of the
Pennsylvania State Archives.

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