Mr. Sturkey,

I have had the accuracy of Henderson's work discussion with Alan and several others before. I have done quite a bit of comparing and contrasting of the Compiled Military Service Records and the Georgia Confederate Veteran's and Widow's Indigent Pensions (Henderson's primary sources) as it relates to the 39th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment and found that a huge amount of data is left out or completely ignored. I have seen this when I have also spot checked several other regiments. Unfortunately, I had many researchers try to draw various conclusions from the scant data in the work. For example, there are few Army of Tennessee muster rolls that survived from April 1864 through the end of the war. I have been approached by at least two researchers that were trying to make inferences that if a soldier did not appear in any records from April 1864 until the end of the war that they deserted. They would often use Henderson’s book as their primary source. This could be further from the truth. I have verified that many of my soldiers in the 39th Georgia that show "no later record" after April 1864 where wounded during the Atlanta campaign. Remember that she had a team of folks helping her out and I do not believe they had a template or consistent instructions on what to incorporate into the work. I have spoken to one of the Archivist at the Georgia State Archives about my findings several months ago. He did not indicate that anyone was working on redoing the work. When I publish my regimental history I will have totally reworked the data to reflect a wide range of primary sources and it will be a CD supplement to the actual history. The CD data is already over 200 pages long and it will grow by several hundred more before it is done.

I hope this helps.

Respectfully,

Gerald D. Hodge, Jr.
War Between the States Historian
39th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment
http://39thgavolinfrgt.homestead.com/39thHomepage.html