A brief guide to researching your ancestors who may have fought in the Civil War.

1. Researching Your
Civil War Ancestor
…with special attention to local
resources in Monroe County

2. Basic information
• Are you sure that they served?
• What is their name?
• What is their age?
• Where were they living (city, farm, etc)
• Did they survive the war?
• Did they have a family?
• Unit – Army, Navy, Union, Confederate?

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Things to consider
• Most personnel in the Civil War were between
18 and 30 - but they may have been as young
as 10 or as old as 70! Did the person you seek
die between 1861 and 1865 (when the war
was being fought?) Or later?

4. Useful resources:
• Censuses, especially 1865 & 1890
• Service records
• Regimental histories
• The 1865 NY state census shows newly
returned Union veterans; the 1890 Federal
census (which survived the destruction of the
regular name census) shows those who were
alive and in New York in 1890.

5. Beginnings
• Check in basic books about CW research. See
the bibliography.
• Look in the NYS Adjutant General’s reports
(and the index thereto) to find the possible
units.
• Be advised the spelling and names can be exact
– or very far off!
• Dornbusch and Wilt are also good sources to
find soldiers.

6. Check the CWSS

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The CWSS -

8. Get the pension papers if they exist
• They may give when someone came over,
when they enlisted, where they served, when
they got married, have information about the
widow(er), give data about where they lived
after the war, etc.

9. The RPL has: the CW master index.
• What is the Civil War Master Index? This index
is a compilation of names taken from various
Local History Division sources such as card files,
the 1865 census, and the County Historian's
Office. It contains over 38,000 names primarily
from the Rochester and Monroe County area.

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• There is a
special 1890
census of
surviving
soldiers…

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What does this contain?
• The 1890 veteran schedules asked for the following
information: names of surviving soldiers, sailors,
marines, and widows; rank; name of regiment or
vessel; date of enlistment; date of discharge, length
of service; post office address; disability incurred; and
remarks. Although all of this information is available
on the census schedules themselves, information
listed in this index includes the veteran's name or
widow's name, rank, year of enlistment, and year of
discharge.

12. Creative spellings…

13. Or this…
His name was actually Philip Krautwurst

14. A local connection…

15. A locally produced web site
• is located at:
http://www.libraryweb.org/rochimag/roads/home
• It has won the right to use the National
Underground Railroad Network to Freedom
badge on the web site.

16. Town historians might also have data
• You can ask your town or village historian what
they may have available in their collections.
This can be very helpful and varies a lot.
• This might be tax exemptions for veterans,
enlistment records, bounty papers, and other
sources. They may even have pictures of the
people!

17. Also try the NY Heritage site:

18. And the DPLA:

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A case history
Ancestor is Karl Naukam,
from Germany.
Simple, right? Unusual last name,
easy first name.
Right……

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