 Welcome to the National Archives and Records Administration's 2023 genealogy series. My name is Andrea Matney, the program's coordinator, and we are so happy you've joined us. In recognition of public service, we are offering a themed program that will provide family history research tools focused on both military and civilian records. You will also learn how to preserve your own family collections. Our presenters are topic experts broadcasting from across the United States and offering sessions intended for beginners to experienced family historians. All are welcome. In addition, we invite you to join the conversation. Participate with the presenters and other family historians during each session's premier time. Here's how to engage in live chat. You can ask questions via chat by first logging into YouTube. Please do watch chat because the speaker will answer your questions there in the chat. Type your questions about today's topic at any time. In addition, please select Show More to find links to handouts and the events evaluation forum. We are offering six genealogy sessions on Wednesdays at 1 p.m. Eastern Time, starting in May and ending in mid-June. If you missed the premier broadcast, know that the videos and handouts will remain available after the event and at your convenience. Welcome to our first session in the series entitled, Civilians at War, Records of Participation in U.S. Military Conflicts. Our presenter is Claire Kluskens. Claire is the subject matter expert for genealogy and census-related records and digital projects archivist from the National Archives in Washington, D.C. She currently works on digital and description projects for the National Archives Catalog and Archives.gov website. She lectures frequently and has written extensively for many types of genealogical publications. Claire has been a genealogical researcher since 1976 and a National Archives staff member since 1992. Claire, thank you for helping us start off the genealogy series. I'm turning it over to you. Good day, everyone. Welcome to Civilians at War, Records of Participation in U.S. Military Conflicts. In this lecture, we will see examples of federal records that show civilian participation in war or defense-related activities, effects of war upon civilians, and noncombatants from the Revolutionary War to World War I. These are just examples that highlight digitized records that are readily available online either in the National Archives Catalog or on popular genealogy websites. As examples, they are intended to encourage you and inspire you to think about the ways in which civilians in your own families may have participated in war efforts. We will explore civilian participation through government employment, providing services, selling goods, making loans, and other non-governmental activities. War can have devastating effects upon individuals and families. They may suffer the death of a family member, which may lead to pension claims and possibly other records. They may suffer property losses that lead to claims for reimbursement. Let us start with the Revolutionary War. An excellent place to begin is National Archives Microfilm Publication M847, special index to numbered records in the War Department collection of Revolutionary War records, 1775 to 1783. I don't expect you to look at actual microfilm because digital images are available online. The Microfilm Publication Number is part of the identification of this record series. References in M847 that refer to books lead to National Archives Microfilm Publication M853 numbered books concerning military operations and service, pay, and settlement of accounts and supplies in the War Department collection of Revolutionary War records. References in M847 that refer to a manuscript number lead to National Archives Microfilm Publication M859 miscellaneous numbered records, the manuscript file in the War Department collection of Revolutionary War records, 1775 to the 1790s, M853 and M859 are also online. In M847 the index card for Citizen Kayla Brokaw refers to book 28 in which his story is recorded on pages 17 and 18 and 30, 31 and 32. This is from the orderly book of adjutant general Colonel Alexander Scamble. Kayla Brokaw lived near Middlebrook, New Jersey. On February 11, 1779, a formal complaint was filed with the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General Washington, that Colonel Craig had beaten and otherwise ill-treated citizen Kayla Brokaw. We don't learn exactly why Colonel Craig beat up Mr. Brokaw, but a court of inquiry was held which reported on February 24, 1779 that inhabitants of the country who dealt with soldiers in an improper manner and to the prejudice of good order and military discipline did so at their own risk. Kayla Brokaw, they said, could sue Colonel Craig in the regular courts of law if he felt himself aggrieved. General Washington was disappointed by the response of the court of inquiry and his response is recorded here. He had wanted the court of inquiry to determine whether Mr. Brokaw's complaint had any merit because misconduct by military personnel made them subject to military discipline as well as a lawsuit in the regular civil courts. All improper treatment of an inhabitant by an officer or soldier was destructive of good order and discipline as well as subversive of the rights of society. Officers should refrain from everything that may have even the appearance of abuse of power. We'll never know from this whether Kayla Brokaw was a Tory or Tory sympathizer or whether he was upset by American soldiers causing damage to his farm, but this one incident from his life during wartime is recorded here. Moving on to another example in M847, the index card for Martha Brewster of New York indicates three different manuscript numbers where she is mentioned. One of them is shown here, manuscript 12121, which is a copy of a request by Colonel Joseph Webb that his wages for four months be paid to Captain Henry Brewster on his behalf. This was witnessed by Martha Brewster, who was presumably related to Henry, as well as Ruth Hulpe and Colonel Wiefenfels. The papers of the Continental Congress are also useful for locating mentions of civilians. John Butler and his colleagues in the 1970s compiled a comprehensive index to these records. This five-volume set can be found in large libraries and online. There are three good strategies for using this index. Search by personal name or a quick focus on persons of interest. Search by geographic location to learn more about specific places affected by the war, even if your ancestor's name is not listed. And search by military unit name and by the regimental or company commander's name. On this slide, we see examples of the information found in the index. You see mentions of specific people, such as John and Samuel Eastburn, John Easton, Jacob and Mark Easter, and Joseph Easterbrooks. John Easton was on a list of the inhabitants of Kentucky who wrote to Congress in 1783. Jacob and Mark Eastern were inhabitants of the west side of Laurel Hill Mountains in Pennsylvania who wrote to Congress in January 1783. In fact, Windsor, Connecticut was the location of several letter writers or mentioned in several letters. In addition to a brief description, you see important information. The microphone publication number, typically M247, the roll number, the item number, the volume number and page number. So under the first entry listed here, East Whiteland, Pennsylvania, you see an italics M247 for the microphone publication number, R50 for roll 50, item 41, volume 5, page 13. That is specific information that will get you to the exact record mentioned. Again, there are digital images of M247 online. And please consult the handout that accompanies this lecture for more information. Moving on to the War of 1812, I chose a rather unusual item. The slide shows part of a page from a record book that was captured by the U.S. Army from Canadian officials in May 1813. Joseph Edwards, Justice of the Peace at Niagara Upper Canada, that was Ontario, used this book from December 1811 to January 1813. It includes names and information about 65 Americans who claimed exemption from military service and wanted a passport to leave Canada. On the slide is the record for Erie Osburn, native of the state of Vermont, Carpenter, who came into the province two years ago and has resided at long point settlement working at his trade. He has no fixed property in the province nor has he taken the oath of allegiance and is desirous of returning to the United States. This record is from about November 1812, and they very well be the only record that documents this man's movement in and out of Canada. After this record book was captured, it was used by Major William Johnson of the U.S. Army's Inspector General's Office to issue receipts for supplies and services. Digital images of this record book and additional information are in the National Archives catalog. Moving on now to the American Civil War. Today, in the 21st century, we expect that the U.S. military will notify next of kin upon the loss of a service member. This was not the case during the Civil War. Instead, families might see the name of a loved one in a casualty list in a newspaper. They might receive a letter from one of the man's comrades. Some families may never have learned the ultimate fate of a loved one. There is a small collection of letters, requests for information relating to missing soldiers, which were received by quartermaster James Moore, 1863 to 1867, that mostly relates to Union soldiers who had been held by Confederates at Andersonville Prison. Some families knew their relatives were dead. Other families weren't sure. This is one letter from that series from George Collins of Boston, Massachusetts, who wrote on May 26, 1865, just a month after the end of the war. Collins wrote, James H. Collins, taken a prisoner of war, November 3, 1863, a member of Company A, First Rhode Island Cavalry, one T. O'Reilly, also a prisoner, had tented with him two months previous to being exchanged, had left James, March 25, 1865. He, James, was then too weak to be removed for exchange. I wish you would be kind enough to inquire. As my anxiety concerning him is intense, I have lost all trace of him. Please tell him, a sister's and a brother's blessing attend him always. We have no parents, there were only three of us, James being the youngest. What a heart-rending letter, and the only place that this letter exists is in this small series of letters received by quartermaster James Moore, who is identifying and burying Union dead in the South. People filed claims against the government for all kinds of reasons. Property loss, unpaid wages, materials supplied but not paid for. The list of claims filed with the Office of U.S. Military Railroads, 1864 to 1866, includes the claim number, name of claimant, the date span and type of services performed, the amount claimed, the name of the person or company, presenting the claim, and the date the claim was presented. Services or occupations performed by claimants included, machinist, car repairer, laborer, track layer, conductor, foreman, wrecking hand, wiper, breakman, teamster, engineer, wood agent, blacksmith, fireman, helper, timekeeper, clerk, trackman, pile driver, stonemason, mill hand, and conductor. On the page shown on the slide, some of the names we see include Matthew Sanders, machinist, M.N. Rogers, Isaac Swain, Henry Grimm, and others who were carpenters, John Radigan was deceased, but his claim was presented by Mary Hickey and Catherine Kane. During the Civil War, the Provost Marshall was responsible for running a fair draft, transporting volunteers and draftees to military officers and identifying and apprehending deserters. Records that exist for any particular Provost Marshall vary, but here is part of the page of the records of a Provost Marshall in Maine. There was one Provost Marshall for each congressional district and he needed a staff to help do his work. This Provost Marshall paid George P. Field, J. W. Wheeler, and George G. Davis for their services as clerks, P. Simonton for his services as assistant surgeon, F. L. Jackson and B. M. Flint for unspecified services, William Atkinson for wood to burn in the stove, which was purchased from J. B. Wadland, and rent was paid to Christina Morrison for the rooms or building in which the Provost Marshall operated. Surplus government property is not a new thing. During the Civil War, the government had to get rid of horses that were no longer fit for military service. Horses were used to pull wagons and artillery and provided transportation for the cavalry. Horses aged quickly under the workload and the stress caused by explosions and the noise of battle. Yet the same horses could still be serviceable for quieter and less demanding farm and family transportation needs. Horses the government had bought for $100 were often later sold at auction for just a few dollars. In the list of horses sold at Frederick Maryland and Reading Pennsylvania in February 1864, we see a description of the color of the horse, its age, the amount paid, and the buyer. The age of the horse was not its chronological age, but based on how worn out it was from military service. The names of the buyers were written down by the auctioneer's clerk who often spelled names creatively and not always consistently. During our 2021 genealogy series, I gave a presentation on teamsters, laundresses, nurses, settlers, and more. So if you are interested in these categories of Union Army civilian personnel, I invite you to view that video presentation, which is online. Turning now to the Confederate side of the Civil War, the Confederate government used all available resources to fight the war, including using the labor of enslaved persons to build fortifications, place obstructions in important navigable rivers, and provide labor at harness making shops, ordinance factories, and arsenals. The Confederate slave payrolls in the National Archives has been digitized and primarily documented the work done by enslaved persons at locations in Virginia and North Carolina. The slave holders were paid for the work of enslaved persons, enslaved persons who did the work were not paid. On the slide, we see an example of a payroll from the District of Cape Fear in North Carolina from August 1863, where in the middle of the image you see Alex McRae provided enslaved individuals named John, Jim, Henry, Ben, and Lewis. Each of them worked 29 days that month and Alex McRae was paid $20.54 for each one based on the rate of $22 per month. Other Confederate records include the record books of executive, legislative, and judicial offices of the Confederate government that are often known by the shorthand name of Confederate chapter books due to their arrangement by chapters and volumes. About half of these have been digitized. They include information about military personnel, loans from civilians, passport records, post office mail contracts, and more. For example, we will start with chapter 10, which is the Treasury Department chapter, volume 148, which is the register of subscriptions at Rome, Georgia to the loan authorized by Act of Congress, February 28, 1861. All of these volumes were rebounded by the National Archives in the 1950s or 1960s with 10 colored covers and a label on the cover or spine, such as you see here. Let's take a look inside this volume. We see the names of people who lived at or near Rome, Georgia, who loaned money to the Confederate government, Alfred Sforter, $100, Mrs. Martha B. Sforter, $100, Ms. Martha H. Cooley, $100, J. M. Pepper, $50, George S. Black, $50, and so forth, a lot of names. Another example is from chapter nine, the Secretary of War, volume 110, orders to arrest persons applying for passports, passport office, Richmond, Virginia, 1864. The South was a war zone, and if you were a civilian wandering around, it was a good idea to have authorization to do so in the form of a passport. On this page it says, if J. W. Haywood from Western Virginia, and claiming to be a subtler, that's a traveling merchant, applies for a pass, arrest him, by order of Captain McCubbin, written in this book by James A. White, Chief Clerk. At the bottom of the page it says, if a man named J. D. Morissette, about five feet high, have a black beard, wears a yellowish-yellow cap, proc coat of a yellowish hue, eyes black, age about 35 years, arrest him, and send him to Captain McCubbin. He is said to be a spy, lately lived in Nelson County, by order of Captain McCubbin, written in this book by J. H. Brooks, Chief Clerk. Our next example from the Confederate chapter books is from Chapter 11, the Post Office, Volume 8, Mail Contracts, 1861 to 1864. The images on the screen are for a contract dated May 15, 1863, in which Tolbert S. Morgan, Jacob Geiger, and Archibald Davis agree to be the sureties, another word for guarantors, for Tolbert S. Morgan, route carrier of Kings Ferry, Nassau County, Florida, to carry mail from July 1, 1863 to June 30, 1867, or $1,200 per year. The postmaster and other persons are also named on this record. Since the Confederacy ended in April 1865, it's clear that Mr. Morgan's contract to carry the mail ended well before 1867. Another example from the Confederate Post Office department is this register of dead letters from 1864 that indicates the post office and state to which a letter was addressed, the name of the person that the letter was supposed to go to, the name of the letter writer, the contents of the letter and their value, and the post office to which the letter was apparently forwarded. And finally, one last Confederate example comes from a very small record book of the list of subscribers to the produce loan who offered to sell cotton as recorded by the Confederate Treasury Office in Jackson, Mississippi. There are only five people listed, one of whom is William S. Ogilvy of Sport, Mississippi, who on September 11, 1862 offered 100 bales of mid-grade cotton at 70 cents a bale, but said the cotton was in danger, presumably in danger of being captured. There's no indication here that the offer was accepted. It may be that the cotton was captured by Union forces before it could be moved. Regardless, it is an example of one person's attempt to support the Confederate war effort. American history has seen many conflicts with Indigenous peoples of North America that are often called Indian wars. I take as my example a register of contracts with civilian surgeons for the period 1871 to 1885. This is a record of civilian doctors who were employed at forts and military posts in the United States, many of which were in the western United States. This, as you can see from the image on the slide, is just a list of names, but it also gives the year of the doctor's contract and the military district in which he was employed, which are very useful clues to lead to further research in other records that might mention the position. Turning now to World War I, let's start with a little history. On June 28, 1914, Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist. Then in July and August 1914, the major European powers declared war on each other. The United States remained neutral, and so from 1914 to 1917, there was opportunity for American civilians to go abroad and assist foreign war efforts overseas. Then on April 6, 1917, the U.S. declared war on Germany. Examples of American civilian participation overseas 1914 to 1917 might be found in applications for U.S. passports. We have a lot of information about these records on our passport applications information page online at archive.gov slash research slash passport. Please note that until 1941, the U.S. government did not require its citizens who were traveling abroad to have a passport. The example I've chosen of an American citizen going overseas during the World War I period is from August 1917. The U.S. has already declared war at this point. This is the passport application of William Victor Prechtl of Norwalk, Ohio, a young man, 20 years old, born in Cleveland, Ohio, a son of Charles Prechtl, who was also born in Cleveland, Ohio. William said on the first page of his application that he was going to France and England to enter the American Field and Ambulance Service. As I mentioned, passports were not required until 1941, but he had a German surname and his grandparents had been born in Germany, so it was a really good idea for him to have an American passport so he could prove he was a U.S. citizen if needed. In addition to the formal application, there is a letter from his congressman which requests that a passport be issued to him because he was going to be a volunteer ambulance driver sailing from New York on September 1, 1917, and that the passport should be sent to the American Field Service office in New York. And there is also a letter from the New York Office of the American Field Service to the same effect. In conclusion, we've looked at a variety of records that show ways in which civilians participated in war efforts or were affected by war. These are examples of the types of records that exist. There is no, no comprehensive index to all the records in the National Archives, so you will have to do some research. When was your person of interest alive? What were their life circumstances that might have enabled them to do something for the war effort or be affected as a civilian during wartime? What government agencies might have created records for that activity at that time and place? And mention of a person in one record may possibly lead to additional information about that person in other related records. Thank you for your attention today. If you have questions in the future, email addresses and other contact information for the National Archives is on our website, archives.gov, and you can also contact the National Archives at the History Hub at historyhub.history.gov where you can ask questions and also see the answers that our staff have given to other people's questions. I am open for questions now. Thank you again for watching. This ends the lecture portion of the broadcast, but we will continue to take your questions about today's topic in the chat. If we do not get to your question, please send us an email. Note that the presentation's video recording and handout will remain available on this YouTube page and our website. We plan future programs based on your feedback. Would you please take a minute to complete our short online evaluation form? At this time, I'd like to thank the genealogy series team who contributed to the success of this program. We are grateful for your work. And if you enjoyed this video, check out the Know Your Records program. We have over 100 educational videos on how to do research with us, including playlists for civilian service and U.S. veterans. In the autumn of 2023, the Know Your Records program is offering this schedule of sessions. We invite you to participate with the National Archives presenters and other audience members. Although this concludes the video portion of the broadcast, we will continue to take your questions in chat for another 10 minutes. Please stay if you have questions. Thank you for joining us for today's presentation.