New York State Historian Transcriptions of Civil War Records

Arranged by arm of service (artillery, cavalry, engineers), then numerically by unit number. At the beginning of the series is a file of executive communications.

This series consists of transcriptions of official reports, correspondence, and orders primarily relating to the volunteer artillery, cavalry, and engineer regiments furnished by New York during the Civil War.

Most of these records were transcribed from the multi-volume U.S. War Department publication, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Most transcriptions include the serial number of the Official Records volume from which they were copied either typed in the heading or written in pencil in the upper right corner. These transcriptions provide a chronological record of the activities of individual units during the Civil War as reported in the Official Records. They were transcribed as part of an effort by the State Historian to fulfill his statutory duty "to collect, collate, compile, edit and prepare for publication all official records, memoranda and data relative to the war of the rebellion." This work on the Civil War was not completed or published.

Records on the following artillery, cavalry and engineer units were transcribed: Artillery--1st and 3rd Battalions, 1st-3rd, and 6th Light Regiments, 2nd, 4th-11th, 13th-16th Heavy Regiments, and 1st-9th, 11th-13th, 15th-19th, 21st, 24th-27th, 30th, and 32nd-34th Independent Batteries; Cavalry--1st-16th, 18th-22nd, 24th-25th Regiments, 23rd Battalion, 2nd Mounted Rifles, and 1st-2nd Veteran Regiments; and Engineers--1st, 15th, and 50th Regiments.

One folder, labelled "Executive Communications," contains a variety of materials, including: transcribed correspondence between state and War Department officials (from the Official Records); transcribed correspondence concerning New York State Militia regiments during the Civil War (source unknown); miscellaneous galley pages of transcribed correspondence and reports; two issues of the "National Tribune" newspaper, 1897; and lists of page references in volume 5 of the Official Records containing information on New York infantry regiments.

There are no restrictions regarding access to or use of the material.