New York State Adjutant General's Office Town and City Registers of Men Who Served in the Civil War

Series is arranged alphabetically by name of county, then alphabetically by town.

Chapter 690 of the Laws of 1865 required each town clerk, upon receiving suitable blanks from the chief of the State's Bureau of Military Record, "to make out a full and complete record of the names of all the soldiers and officers who composed his town's quotas of the troops furnished to the United States" during the Civil War. One copy of the record was to be filed with the Bureau of Military Record and another was to "be preserved among the records of the town."

This series consists of bound registers containing printed forms completed by hand by town and city clerks throughout New York State. Entitled "Complete Record Relating to Officers, Soldiers, and Seamen Composing the Quotas of Troops Furnished to the United States...in the War of Rebellion," the registers provide military service data and personal biographical information regarding the men furnished by each town or city during the Civil War.

The registers provide: the individual's full name; residence; date and place of birth (not completed in all instances); present rank, regiment and company; date of enlistment; date of muster and rank; length of enlistment; place of enlistment; race; amount of bounty paid by town or county if disbursed by supervisor; marital status; previous occupation; parents' names (not completed in all instances); and dates of promotions, resignations, discharges, and death (not completed in all instances). This last section often provides general information concerning engagements the individual fought in and, if he was killed, his place of burial.

If the individual did not die during the war, his present address is sometimes listed. For individuals who were in the naval service, the information is identical except that the name of the vessel(s) upon which he served is listed. At the end of each register is a certificate signed and dated by the town clerk attesting to the fact that all information provided is "a full and complete record." Unfortunately, gaps are widespread and unpredictable; the extent to which information is complete varies from page to page within the bound registers.

The register completed by the town clerk of Newtown, Queens County is the single representative register for the New York City region in possession of the New York State Archives. In addition to the usual information, this register occasionally gives names of persons hiring substitutes with the names of their substitutes.

The register for Newtown also contains several documents assigning powers of attorney for soldiers on active duty for purposes of voting by proxy in the 1864 presidential and gubernatorial elections. Also pasted in the volume are several affidavits stating that the absent elector has been a citizen of the United States for ten days; is of the age of twenty-one years; has been an inhabitant of the State of New York for one year preceding the election; has been a resident of Queens County for four months and a resident of Newtown for thirty days; has not made a bet or wager and is not interested in a bet or wager depending upon the result of the election; and is in actual military service (with regiment and place of assignment). A few copies of actual gubernatorial ballots, disallowed on technicalities, are included.

The Newtown register contains a statement (1890) by the town clerk indicating that this volume and the election papers were found in "the cells." The clerk further states that he caused the register to be bound and that he then pasted the historic documents into it.

13774-23: This accretion consists of two volumes documenting service records for veterans from the town of Lysander, Onondaga County.

Microfilm is available for use at the New York State Archives or through interlibrary loan.

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

Portions of the series are digitized and are available to New York State residents for free on Ancestry.com New York. You must sign up for a free account to access these records without a paid subscription. To learn more, go to How to Use Ancestry.com New York

Alphabetical name indexes are found at the end of each register.

At some unknown date, the register compiled by the town clerk of Newtown, Queens County was estranged from the rest of the series. Possibly it is the copy "to be preserved among the records of the town." The register was accessioned by the New York State Archives in 1997, but date of transfer and transferring agency are unknown.

13774-23: Gifted to the New York State Archives by the Town Clerk of Lysander in 2019.

There are no restrictions regarding access to or use of this series.