Hayes Lowe
Something to keep in mind when checking soldier lists.
Thu May 10 10:21:31 2001


A thought occurred to me that I wanted to pass along to those of us who do lookups, and to those looking for relatives in the Confederate service.

When somebody asks about relatives in the Confederacy, many of us check our databases of soldiers (or somebody else’s database) for that person. Something that I often fail to think about is that most of these databases or listings are only for the Army. They usually do not include service in other branches/types of Confederate service, i.e. the Navy, the Marines, Secret Service, government agents, bureaucrats, payroll masters/assistants, etc. All of these are “Confederate Veterans”. In fact, all of these were dealt with much more harshly by the Union, after the war, than the Army soldiers. I don’t think that any of these were eligible for the Amnesty Oath.

Broadfoot issues a separate publication for Naval personnel. These listings are not duplicated in the volumes that I commonly use from Broadfoot. I don’t think that Marines are listed in either series, though. And, I don’t know where to find listings for Secret Service…there may not be any.

Just something to keep in mind.