Andrea, When anyone enlist in the service, don't the Army etc. take a photo of the servicemen when they enlist? Is there a special place that they are all kept, like National Archives or something like that? Could you, if you know , direct me in the right direction for this? Or does anyone else know? Whether it be the Civil War, World War I or World War II? Would the collection all be in one place, I guess is what I am asking? Thanks for any help. Betty

I would doubt that any armed service branch would of taken a picture of each soldier when the civil war was occurring, that would have been expensive on the part of the government, but I do know that some soldiers did it on their own, to send home to mother or a sweetheart. That would have been gold mine for many of us if they had though, wouldn't it. I really couldn't say when they did start to do this, but I doubt it was to document each soldier in a data base of some sort. I would suggest contacting your local VA to ask in general questions about photo graphs of soldiers. Most VAs will be able to round up some info on a soldier. They did not charge me, but it was when my father had just passed, and they wanted to honor him the following May, so they sought us out to do the paper work, this fellow was in the INDY office. I have seen group photos from the 1930s of CCCs. My father had his military picture taken in the 1960s, but my grandfather who was in the army right before WW2 broke out did not. I have e-mailed in the past to ask questions about time periods for different kinds of photos, I have one of those photo printed on glass from the civil war time period, but who the gent is can only ever be a guess on my part. Andrea