UPDATE: Register of U.S. Army Enlistments

Well, I am both gratified and chastened! In the comments to the original post below, Chad Milliner points out what should been obvious to me. That is, essentially, that the Register of U.S. Army Enlistments includes only original federal enlistments. Chad reminds us that in the 18th and 19th
centuries, American wars were fought largely by troops raised by the States. The Regular Army was very small. So the database is complete as to the years it covers for the enlistments in the U.S. Army.

And you'd think an old National Guardsman like me would have remembered that! (Don't tell anybody how badly I blew this one--they'll revoke my retirement and order me back into uniform for remedial training!).

Thanks, Chad, for keeping us straight!

Research Resource: Register of Enlistments In U.S. Army

I got an e-mail from Ancestry.com recently that touted some new databases that had been added. Among these was "Registration of Enlistments in the U.S. Army, 1798 --1914. So of course I was interested. I put in the search box a number of my family names, particularly the more unique ones, and turned up nothing. So then I tried the common family names like Johnson and Martin. Still nothing. This made me a little suspicious. I couldn't believe that from 1798 to 1914, for example, only 161 men from Missouri named Johnson had enlisted in the United States Army.

I decided to find out just how many names were actually in the database. I did this by simply leaving the name boxes blank and indicating "United States" in the country box and "any state" and searching. The program reported back that there are something over the 845,000 names in the database. Then I repeated the process placing in the country box the names of countries I thought most likely to have supplied members of the U.S. Army during the time. 1798 -- 1914. Here are the interesting results:

UNITED STATES	845,041
IRELAND	155,122
GERMANY	92,440*
ENGLAND	37,732
CANADA	20,740**
PHILLIPINES	17,005
SCOTLAND	12,083
FRANCE	6,492
RUSSIA	6,195
AUSTRIA	6,107
ITALY	2,396
NETHERLANDS	1,646
POLAND	1,518
TOTAL	1,049,395

*includes 8,329 from Prussia
**includes 10 listed as being from "North America" since Canada was referred to as "British North America"

Are you surprised by these data? I am. More than 10% of the enlistees were born in Ireland. I never would have thought that.

But my purpose was to discover how many records were in the database in order to determine how complete it is. So consider the total number. Except for the Civil War, the Army was fairly small between 1798 and 1914; it could well be 1,050,000 names represents a fairly complete database. But then, it's estimated that during the Civil War, 2,200,000 men served in the Union Army. If that's the case, I reasoned, perhaps most of the records in this database came from the Civil War era. To check this theory, I put in the year box "1863" selected "any country," left all other fields blank, and searched. That yielded a total of 13,568 enlistments. Hmm! Clearly it would take more of an 13,000 enlistments a year to sustain an army of over 2 million. (The total for 1861, the first year of the war, was 29,265).

So perhaps it is that this database contains mostly non-Civil War enlistments. In any event, it's clear that this is not a comprehensive database of U.S. Army enlistments during the period 1798-1914.

Ancestry.com says the original data was found in National Archives Microfilm Publication M233, 81 rolls; Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1780’s-1917, Record Group 94.

Family History Out in the Cold--Again

It's been almost two years since we reported on the discovery of the body of an airman in California's Sierra Nevada. The airman was later identified as 22 year-old aviation cadet Leo Mustonen of Brainerd, Minnesota. He and three other airmen were on a training mission from Mather Field near Sacramento on November 18, 1942, when their aircraft disappeared. The bodies of the other three airmen were not recovered in 2005.

The body of Aviation Cadet Leo Mustonen is handled with honors at the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii. (Department of Defense Photo by Sgt. Michael Caya, U.S. Army)

This week, the story took another turn:

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

A 1923 buffalo nickel, an old Army uniform and a crumbly wallet with faded photographs might help investigators figure out exactly which missing World War II airman's remains are lying in the county morgue in Fresno.

But it will probably come down to something more modern and foolproof - DNA matching.

The remains of what is believed to be the second of four crewmen who died on a 1942 training flight were found by hikers last week on a remote Sierra mountainside in Kings Canyon National Park. The body was taken by helicopter and coroner's van to the morgue Monday.


Read the rest of the story here.

The three missing airmen are 2nd Lt. William Gamber, 23, of Fayette, Ohio; and aviation cadets John Mortenson, 25, of Moscow, Idaho; Ernest Munn, 23, of St. Clairesville, Ohio. As before, the identification will be done by the Central Identification Laboratory of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii. JPAC has world-class personnel and uses the best available science to perform its sensitive mission. Its facility in Hawaii is the largest forensic anthropology laboratory in the world. Hopefully, another family is about to get closure.

You Can Help
There are over 35,000 Americans still missing but deemed recoverable from World War II. The Government is committed to bringing closure to their families as well as the families of missing servicemembers from other conflicts. DNA samples contributed by family members will aid in the identification process. If your family stories include the lore of a loved one who never returned from war, it may not be too late to help write the end of the story. See the JPAC website for information on how to contribute a DNA sample.

Today is "Zeke Johnson" Day

A week from this Thursday, which would be June 14, 2007, is the 160th anniversary of the birth of my great-great-grandfather, Ezekiel Johnson. I've written about him before (here, here, and here). For awhile, he was one of my very difficult brickwalls. And then one day, a sudden breakthrough gave me some special insight into his origins and at the same time raised more questions. I've been trying to solve some of those questions.

In genealogy, it never hurts to go over ground that may have been plowed once or twice before. I was exploring various databases for "Ezekiel Johnson" or "Zeke Johnson," when I found buried treasure! I'm so thrilled about this that I hereby declare today to be "Zeke Johnson Day" at GeneaBlogie.

What I found were Grandpa Zeke's military records in a database labeled "U.S. Colored Troops Compiled Military Records." I realized that I had looked here before for "Ezekiel" but not for "Zeke," which is how the records were indexed. These records contain a lot of information.

A key element of these records is a card which is transcribed as follows:

18 | USCT

Zeke Johnson,
Co. D, 18 Reg't US Col'd Inf
Appears on
Company Descriptive Book
of the organization named above.

Description
Age 17 years; height 5 feet 4 inches
Complexion Black
Eyes Black Hair Black
Where Born Missouri
Occupation Farmer

Enlistment
When July 23, 1864
Where Kansas City
By Whom Capt Hall; term 3 years
Remarks: Battle of Sand Mountain,
Ala.; Jan 29, '85

That document tells me several things I did not know: that he was a short man (his granddaughter and great-granddaughter are in miniature as well). He enlisted at age 17.

Another significant document is this one:

Click on image to enlarge
Image Copyright (c) The Generations Network, Inc. Used in accordance with Limited Use License

Now we know quite bit more about Ezekiel Johnson, to wit:

Born in Clay County in 1847, Zeke Johnson was in 1864 the slave of one Henry Wilhite. In May, 1864, he "left" Wilhite and in July, 1864, in Kansas City, he enlisted in the 18th Regiment, United States Colored Infantry. He received a bounty7y of $300 for enlisting. In September 1864, he joined the regiment at Benton Barracks near St Louis.

The regiment moved to Nashville in November 1864 and participated in the Battle of Nashville in December of 1864. They then moved on into Alabama, fighting the Battle f Sand Mountain in January 1865 and then remaining in Alabama until February 1865. Moving to Tennessee next, the 18th remained there until being reassigned to Huntsville, Alabama in 1866. The unit was mustered out at Huntsville in February 1866. Zeke Johnson was present for duty at all of these times except part of August 1864 and Sept-Oct 1864 when he was hospitalized for diarrhea

When he was mustered out, Zeke Johnson was entitled to keep his musket and "accoutrements." He owed the Government $21.54 for clothing, but the Government still owed him $100 as part of his bounty.

We don't know exactly what Grandpa Zeke did immediately after leaving the Army, but we know that on September 5, 1867, he married Sarah Gilbert back in Clay County. In the late 1880's, the Kansas City directory showed him residing at 2544 Cherry and working as a carpenter for Standard Implement Co.

And what of his erstwhile master, Henry Wilhite? He joined the Confederate Army, but beyond that, we don't know any more about him.

I had never known the name of Zeke's slave-owning family until I saw it in these records. This knowledge will advance my research significantly. For reasons that I've written about before, I don't think Wilhite was Zeke's original or only master. I think Zeke is the 3 year old male shown in the ownership of Emmons Johnson on the 1850 slave schedule. We need to find some transaction between Emmons Johnson and Henry Wilhite.

Ezekiel Johnson died on August 8, 1933, having lived long enough to see his great-granddaughter, my mother.

The U.S. Colored Troops Military Service Records are on Ancestry.com as part of their Military collection. Curiously, they are not part of the Civil War collection. The records are from the National Archives, Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780's-1917, Record Group 94.
The use we made of these records here illustrates the value of such records to the family historian. Of course, the National Archives has available similar records for military personnel of all races. Check this page for pre-World War I records.