New York State Bureau of Records of the War of the Rebellion Abstracts of Muster Rolls of National Guard Units Mustered into…

This series is arranged numerically by unit, then alphabetically by last name.

Frederick Phisterer, chief of the Bureau of Military Records of the War of Rebellion, states in his 1906 annual report to the Adjutant General that "the organizations of the militia which served in the War of the Rebellion have been taken in hand and the records of their members...recopied on slips (i.e., the printed abstract form)."

Phisterer further reports that "information has been received from the Auditor of the War Department to complete the records of eleven regiments." In his 1907 annual report, Phisterer states that during the Civil War "there served... for short periods about sixty-five organizations of the militia; of these all but about thirty have been collated; those not collated are incomplete and require information from the War Department."

There are thirty-eight militia organizations documented in this series. Subtracting this number from the sixty-five which Phisterer says served, leaves twenty-seven ("about thirty") units for which there are no records. This most likely would be the result of failing to acquire the necessary data from the War Department.

These abstracts were compiled from original muster rolls of New York State Militia units that were temporarily mustered into federal service during the Civil War (in 1863 the State's Militia became known as the National Guard). The abstracts are printed forms which have been completed by hand and contain the following categories of information for each individual: date of enlistment; age (in years); place of enlistment and for how long; date mustered in; grade; explanation; and remarks. The explanations usually pertain to the locations where the unit was assigned after it was mustered into federal service. The remarks deal with such matters as how officers were paid for their services, promotions, demotions, desertions, variations in spelling of name, and dates of absences.

In addition to service data, the abstracts contain spaces where each man's place of birth, age (in years), occupation, eye and hair color, height, and complexion could be recorded. This data is almost always omitted.

High resolution images of selected original documents in this series are available in State Archives Digital Collections.

B1833 Name index to abstracts of muster rolls of National Guard Units mustered into federal service during the Civil War, indexes this series.

A two-volume name index, prepared by the New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs, is available at the repository.

The index to series B0800 contains 39,813 entries. Each entry includes the soldier's name and regiment and provides a pointer to the location within the records series.

Collation date, circa 1905-1908.

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