The material that was used to make up the O.R. is in scattered collections with copies at the NARA. For the best explanation of Confederate records you may want to read "The Confederacy: A Guide to the Archives of the Government of the Confederate States of America," pages 413-425, by Henry Putney Beers published by the NARA. They have a similar book on the Federal records but I don't have the title immediately available. I personally need to buy it because I am finding myself digging into the Federal records more and more.

As far as Confederate records, it could have fell into two categories. The first would be a record of the District of Indian Territory. A description of these records can be found on pages 295-296 in the aforementioned book. The other could have been in the records of a particular department (i.e. Quartermaster Department, Medical Department, etc).

It is very possible that it was the original writer and not the transcriber that made the error. I see all kind of errors and it is often phonetics. The speaker may be pronouncing a word and the person writing does not know how to spell it and the speaker is illiterate and does not know how to spell it and it gets written how it sounds. It is probably pretty entertaining to watch and listen to me sit in a library or archive and hear me sound out some of this stuff. "Poor man, he has been spinning microfilm too much."

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Respectfully,

Gerald D. Hodge, Jr.
M.A. Military History - Civil War Concentration
Research - Preservation
Historian: 39th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment
Ken