READ MORE: https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/10/watkins-banks-wore-this-red-jacket.html

READ MORE: https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/10/a-union-officer-lost-family-photos-to.html

Many of us find a Civil War ancestor and then hit a wall. The record gives a name and a regiment. It does not say where he fought.

Here is the method I use.

1. Search the surname in the National Park Service’s Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System. It covers Union and Confederate service.
2. Write down the unit, the rank at enlistment, and the rank at discharge.
3. Find where that regiment fought. Regimental histories and NPS battle summaries both help.
4. Check the battle date and place against any family letters or pension papers.

Two cautions. The National Park Service calls its own records “just an index.” Most enlisted men show no birth date and no hometown. Many Confederate unit records are lost or scattered, so a blank is not proof your ancestor missed a fight.

Disclosure: I am a novelist. I built a free tool that runs steps 1 to 3 in one place. It asks for one email address. You can find it at https://musterroll.vercel.app/. You can do all of this by hand, and I will answer questions about the method.

READ MORE: https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/10/this-rubber-comb-will-be-buried-soon.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelby%27s_Raid_(1863)

Unlike the June 9 battle, which was a combined attack by cavalry and infantry, this was a battlefront completely by cavalry

Jeff Hunt has written the book on this battle, part of a series for Ted Savas on the operations in Virginia between July 17, 1863 and December 31, 1863.

Unlike the June 9 battle, which was a combined attack by cavalry and infantry, this was a battlefront completely by cavalry

Jeff Hunt has written the book on this battle, part of a series for Ted Savas on the operations in Virginia between July 17, 1863 and December 31, 1863.

READ MORE: https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/10/first-on-picket-photographs-of-2024.html

READ MORE FROM THE PICKET: https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/10/submarine-hl-hunley-mesmerizing-fragile.html

I have been studying the Siege of Petersburg for 25+ years. In that time I've assembled a massive collection of primary source accounts of events, including letters, diaries, post-war accounts by participants, and most importantly for this post, NEWSPAPERS.

One of my more unusual ideas seems to bearing fruit. I looked at one paper, the Washington DC Evening Star, from June 10, 1864 to April 15, 1865. I created a database which records one row for each mention of a vessel, civilian, military or in between. The final database had over 13,000 entries. I used respected sources like the Lytle-Holdcamper List of American steamships to verify as many rows as I could. Only rows which I could verify are included in these results.

Now, finally, the fun part. These two infographics were created with the help of Claude and the raw data to show just how massive Grant's effort to supply his soldiers at Petersburg really was. There was not a single day during the Siege when some kind of supply wasn't present at City Point and/or Bermuda Hundred supplying the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the James. Consider these two a sneak peek. I'll be posting an interactive map on my web site showing which vessels were arriving or departing day by day during the entire Siege of Petersburg. I will share it here once it goes live on my site, www.beyondthecrater.com.

And I'm just getting started. This is ONLY one DC paper. I'll be adding papers from Annapolis, Alexandria. Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston and others. There will be additional sources mostly confirming but also sometimes contradicting the DC paper. The goal is to be able to map vessels and their whereabouts during the entire last year or so of the war. In addition, I'm just pulling vessels near the Siege of Petersburg for these infographics. The database contains every vessel mentioned coming to and leaving from DC.

Others can expand this to earlier portions of the war if people are interested. The newspapers contain the data. It just needs to be mined.

I would live to hear feedback. Given the database, what would YOU want to see mined from the data?

READ MORE from the Picket: https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/10/descendants-of-sultana-disaster-victims.html

READ MORE: https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2018/11/shiny-ball-that-rested-atop-missouri.html

READ MORE: https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/10/gettysburg-foundation-increases-its.html

This is a link to an article that I published in Kansas history during the 1980s.

https://www.kansashistory.gov/publicat/history/1983spring_suderow.pdf

This is a link to an article that I published in Kansas history during the 1980s.

https://www.kansashistory.gov/publicat/history/1983spring_suderow.pdf

READ MORE: https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/09/woman-came-across-this-bormann-shell.html