Could somebody send the original message to me again. My trigger finger was a little jumpy and I accidentally erased it. Thanks Here it is! I found it in my old mail. Shelly Clipson-Shock USA For those interested in finding information about relatives who fought in the War Between the States (the Civil War), I was surprised to find a very extensive collection in our local library and not at our historical/genealogy library. According to the book "Tracing Your Civil War Ancestor" by Bertram Hawthrone Groene, "the most important set of books in print is the huge 128-volume Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies in the War of the Rebellion popularly called the OR by researchers. In 1864 the United States government started collecting all the available Union armies' records, reports, orders and mamorandums ever issued, posted, filed, or printed. After the war, the federal government collected al the similar Confederate records." These 128 volumes have orders from officers, etc. and give information about the troop movements ets. However, in order to use this set of books YOU MUST KNOW HOW TO USE THE INDEX or you will never find what you are looking for. If anyone is interested, post a message and I will include more info about using the index. This is an incredible set of books with more information than any one person could ever hope to master. It is really neat to find a message written by an ancestor who was an officer to his commanding officer. Like I said above, I was shocked to find this set of books in our local library and not at our research library. I have not checked any of the local univerisities to see if they have it, but you might think of searching there too. There is a companion set of books called Official Records of the Union and Confederate navies in the War of the Rebellion, or the ORN. Apparently there is an accompanying Atlas which is "famous for its accuracy and size" according to Mr. Groene. Mr. Groene's book is a very helpful book for locating information on ancestors who fought in the war. For anyone who is interested, the ISBN # is 0-345-36192-X. If you give that number to your local book store, they can order it. It is a little paper back which was not very expensive, but is VERY helpful (at least to me). Please let me know if this information was helpful to anyone. I am new to the internet, (but not to genealogy) and I haven'e a clue if anyone wants this sort of stuff. Happy hunting!