Hello Greg, I would disagree with your statement. "After making up the CSRs, the Union War Department clerks got tired of the sorting and filing into the units of the CS Army." Aside from making Union CMSR's General Ainsworth also was a key man behind the "Official Records of the War of the Rebellion". Ainsworth's procedure for CMSR's was used from the American Rev. onwards.

General Ainsworth and his staff began making the Confederate CMSR's about 1906. My understanding is when Ainsworth & Staff could not make a connection with a particular soldier they put him into a separate category which then became the miscellaneous files as we know on fold3. It could have been a surname issue or a soldier having a different unit. etc. As you know some Confederate units were known by other names and unit designations. Although General Ainsworth was threaten with a court-martial if he continued working on the Confederate CMSR's he did complete his work and then resigned. General Ainsworth is one of the many unsung hero's in my opinion.

Today at NARA you cannot see a Confederate soldiers CMSR's unless you can show them a need for doing so. Photograph of the CMSR may have not been focused enough is one reason or just simply cannot read information from photograph.

Prior to fold3 and footnote one could look at one Confederate jacket at a time. But decades prior to this a person could pull several Confederate jackets at one time and sometimes people did not put the papers in with the correct jacket. I've even found Spanish American war CMRS's within the files of Confederate CMSR's before and once a USCT's soldiers records in with the Confederate soldiers jacket. Needless to say records belonging to other soldiers. And needless to say some people felt as though these CMSR's belonged to their family and stole them from the NARA. There are a few soldiers who do not show up on fold3 at all but they can be found on micro-film at the NARA in DC. In my opinion if a researcher is serious about their work they need to spend some time at NARA in DC. A great deal of the information is not online.

At times the Confederate citizens files can also be of use on fold3.

Sometimes we see numbers next to the soldiers names. This is suppose to imply how old the soldier was. Sometimes fold3 listed their age and sometimes they missed it. This is not to suggest all soldiers had ages. Sometimes if a Confederate soldier was at a Union hospital, looking down at the bottom of the page you will see his age. However in looking at one soldiers age it stated he was 10 years old. Upon further looking it was his mare who was ten years old and not the soldier.

footnote simply copied what they found in the jacket whether it belonged to a proper soldier was not their concern from watching them copy the records at NARA one day.

I totally agree with you about the many ways you can find information on fold3 aside from the normal procedure.