Frank Cullison <fcullison@yahoo.com> wrote: Snipped: Also, since he had no pension, is it worthwhile to send in the form for just his service record. Compiled service records for both Union and Confederate soldiers and sailors have been microfilmed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Those microfilms are easily obtainable at local LDS Church Family History Centers and cost much less - $.3.25 to rent a film for six weeks - than the fee currently charged by the National Archives for compiled service records. The compiled service records are not as informative as pension records, but they can be useful. Looking for the children of one man, I found one had been captured in Virginia and sent to Fort Deleware, Del., where he died of typhic mal fever. And another, poor soul, had joined the same Confederate infantry unit on 1 June 1861 in Mississippi, was admitted to a hospital in Virginia suffering from measles and typhoid fever in June 1861 and died of pneumonia on 31 Aug. 1861. His file included letters from his father and his father's deposition that he (the dead soldier) was survived by neither wife nor child. His father evenually received $58 from the Confederacy: $11 a month pay for his son's three months of service plus a $25 clothing emollument. I don't know about you, but that's the kind of information I like to have. The compiled service record of one my Yankee great-grandfather, among other things, gave his age at the time of his enlistment and his birth place. This information eventually allowed me to find his parents, grandparents, etc. back to most of the original immigrants in his family. I also found out that he had become captain of a Union company of black soldiers about the time of the fall of Vicksburg. That was something he apparently didn't discuss when he settled in Texas after the war and was news to his descendants. The compiled service records have been indexed by the National Park Service and can be found by searching for "Civil War Soldiers and Sailors." You can plug in the information you have, service, name, place of enlistment, and see a list of people with that name who enlisted in a particular state. Usually people enlisted in the state where they lived. But occasionally they joined up in another state. Once you've found someone in the index that you would like to investigate, make a note of the company and the unit he is listed in. The microfilms are catalogued by state under the "military records" category. The compiled service records from each state are filed by regiment (1st Cavalry, 2nd Cavalry, 1st Infantry, 2nd Infantry and so forth) then by company and then by surname so they are fairly easy to locate. Janey E. Joyce in San Antonio, Texas Janey Joyce <jejoyce@sbcglobal.net>