In partnership with the National Archives, Fold3 recently finished scanning and publishing the complete set of compiled military service records of the United States Colored Troops (USCT). The collection is comprised of over 3.6 million document images for the 1st through 138th USCT Infantry, the 1st through 6th USCT Cavalry, and the USCT Artillery.

Notably, it was 150 years ago this month, on May 22, 1863, that the U.S. War Department established the Bureau of Colored Troops under General Orders, No. 143. Prior to the Civil War, African American soldiers had served in many battles on American soil, but it wasn’t until the Bureau was created that official regiments were formed. And, while Union regiments had African American soldiers within their ranks prior to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, it was that famous announcement that officially authorized the service of African Americans in combat.

The most recently published USCT records, the Union Colored Troops 56th-138th Infantry, were scanned directly from the original textual records, while the rest of the collection was digitized from microfilm. Two affidavits of ownership show the dramatic difference in depth and color of the different processes as we compare a page for Adam Hamilton (67th USCT), scanned from paper records, with that of Edward English (5th USCT Cavalry), previously archived on microfilm.

Additional documents from the file of Adam Hamilton, a private in the 67th USCT, illustrate the many types of records we can uncover in this rich collection of military records. Hamilton enlisted January 24, 1864, in Mexico, Missouri. His physical characteristics and place of birth appear on a Volunteer Descriptive List. He was absent from duty in March and April as he was sick with smallpox in hospital at Port Hudson, Louisiana. He died of Variola (smallpox) on April 7, 1864. Although his military service was short, his file includes 24 pages as Hamilton was a slave of John Vivian of Boone County, Missouri, and Vivian was awarded compensation of $300.

Additional documents within the USCT compiled military service records include:

• A Final Statement for Pvt. David Cantwell of Tennessee who died at 42 of typhoid fever.
• The Certificate of Disability for Discharge for Pvt. Coleman Cardon, “wounded in three different places by Guerillas.”
• An Inventory of Effects, for Pvt. Jackson H. Levi of the 54th Massachusetts.
• A Substitute Volunteer Enlistment stating that John C. Cannon agreed to serve in place of George Metzger, Esq. of Colerain Township, Ohio.

Read more about the U.S. Colored Troops, their service in the Civil War, and access descriptive pamphlets and related resources from the Fold3 description page for Union Compiled Military Service Records – Colored Troops. Explore the complete set of compiled military service records of the United States Colored Troops (USCT) on Fold3 free through May 31st.

The first military conscription in the United States occurred during the Civil War, but the military draft process we are familiar with today originated with the Selective Service Act of 1917, passed by Congress on May 18, 1917.

Six weeks earlier, the United States had declared war on Germany and it was soon apparent there were not enough men in the peacetime army (about 110,000) and not enough immediate volunteers. The Selective Service Act required that all men between ages 21 and 31 register for military service. In response, over ten million registered. Not everyone who registered was drafted as there were several exemptions based on dependents, economic hardship, and type of employment. And, as with any government-mandated conscription process, there were protests and rallies against it.

The biggest difference between the Civil War draft and the Selective Service Act of 1917 was that it did not allow for substitutes. Section 3 stated:

No person liable to military service shall hereafter be permitted or allowed to furnish a substitute for such service; nor shall any substitute be received, enlisted, or enrolled in the military service of the United States; and no such person shall be permitted to escape such service or to be discharged.

Ultimately, there were three registrations as a result of the act:

• June 5, 1917, for men 21 to 30 years old;
• June 5, 1918, for men who had turned 21 since the previous draft, also followed by a supplemental draft on August 24, 1918; and
• September 12, 1918, for men 18 to 45 years old.

When the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, the need for a large army clearly diminished. By 1919, the role of a selective service agency was unnecessary, yet the system was resurrected over twenty years later through the Selective Training and Service Act (STSA) of 1940 as the United States stood on the brink of World War II.

Explore the World War I and World War II collections on Fold3, including WWII “Old Man’s Draft” Registration Cards.

This month, in the spirit of paying tribute to those who fought for the South, Fold3 is offering free access to its rich collection of Confederate Civil War records.

Several of the records and publications from the National Archives’ War Department Collection of Confederate Records (RG 109) are digitized and appear on Fold3. These include Confederate Compiled Service Records, both the Union and Confederate citizens files, and Confederate Casualty Reports. All titles from RG 109 available on Fold3 are listed here with links to each title.

Additionally, Confederate Amnesty Papers, the Confederate Navy Subject File, the Turner-Baker Papers relating to Civil War Subversion Investigations, and files of the Southern Claims Commission are included as part of the free Confederate content for the month of April. Of unique interest, explore the compiled service records for the “Galvanized Yankees,” Confederate prisoners of war who were released by enlisting in the Union Army. Most of the CSA files contain a soldier’s declaration of “Volunteer Enlistment” with an oath of allegiance to the USA.

Learn more about your southern ancestors and those who fought for the Confederate States of America within the Civil War Collection on Fold3.

A forwarding sheet accompanies each quarterly roll. It includes the name of the ship, number of pages in the report, the date, signatures of the executive and commanding officers, and from where the report was issued. Report of Changes forms, created monthly or whenever a major change in personnel took place, are an integral part of the muster roll. Men listed at the top of each form are referenced by the same number at the bottom where their circumstances are detailed and an explanation for the change is printed. In addition to duty transfer, a status could also include desertion, death, hospitalization, and change in rating. If passengers were aboard, they were identified in reports of Non-enlisted Passengers.

The Muster Roll of the Crew is a quarterly snapshot, identifying all personnel at a particular location, with full names listed alphabetically by surname. It provides service number, rating (rank), date of original enlistment, and when each person was received on board.

You can create memorial pages from any name listed on the WWII Navy Muster Rolls and the Pearl Harbor Muster Rolls. Move your cursor to the appropriate line on the document image, click on the box that appears, and then on the sailor’s name. This will take you to a page where you can leave a tribute, upload photos, or add details about that person’s life.

Explore the growing collection of WWII Navy Muster Rolls on Fold3.

In full disclosure mode, I must tell the reader that I hold Mr. Lincoln in the highest of regards. I consider him a man raised up to his day and purpose. I do acknowledge there are those who may not be quite so disposed to consider him so extremely large of stature, and there are even those, I am told, who consider him nothing more than a rather ignoble politician.

Spoiler alert: You will see all three perspectives in the movie. It was wonderful. And, perhaps reading my personal view on the subject into the script, I think the movie portrays him as an incredible, larger-than-life man—fitted to his day and purpose, in spite of being quite human and even exhibiting just a little of that ignoble politician. (The man was in Washington, D. C., after all.)

Regardless of your political views on the man who worked to preserve the Union and bring about the end of slavery in this country, you will likely agree with me that the team who made this movie made one incredible movie.

Upon returning from the megaplex, one of our talented designers went into the Fold3 archives and started looking at the Mathew B. Brady photos of the people portrayed in the movie and noticed an impressive success on the part of casting, makeup, wardrobe, and these twenty-first century actors themselves, to match the nineteenth-century prototypes. I have provided a few comparisons, below, but invite you to compare for yourself other Lincoln movie characters in Fold3’s always-free Mathew B. Brady collection.

(In some cases I have flipped the Brady image to allow for better comparison to the image from imdb.com. Just in case, the Brady image is the one on the left. Click on each image to view it larger: Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln, Robert Lincoln, William Seward (on the left in the movie image), and Thaddeus Stevens.)

UPDATE 3 1:35 pm eastern:  Our current estimated time for the site to be functioning is now around 3 pm eastern.

UPDATE 2 10:30 am eastern: Due to unforeseen issues the site is down and we expect it to be down for the next couple of hours. Thanks for your patience.

UPDATE: 9:00 am eastern: Fold3.com is up and running. We will need to do further updates later but for now enjoy the site. Let us know if you find anything out of the ordinary.

Our efforts to update the site this morning are taking a little longer than we initially planned. We know there is no convenient time to have the site down and we apologize for any trouble this causes. We hope to have the site up and running soon. Thank you for your patience.

Earlier this month, we reached a major milestone when the counter on the Fold3 home page spun to and exceeded 100,000,000 record images. Our digital partners—the National Archives (NARA), Allen County Public Library, FamilySearch, and others—helped Fold3 attain this significant event. We thank them and you, our members and fans, for your support and enthusiasm over the last six years

In January 2007, Footnote.com (Fold3’s predecessor) launched with an initial 4 million images. Many of the Fold3 Team members have been around since those early days, watching the titles roll and the images multiply at an increasingly steady pace, assuring that our visitors can access an impressive range of original military records online.

Example War of 1812 Pension

• Revolutionary War Pensions
• Civil War and Later Veterans Pension Index
• Missing Air Crew Reports
• Brady Civil War Photos

Since those early days, Fold3 has added many more popular titles, including:

• Civil War “Widows’ Pensions”
• Civil War Service Records: Union, Confederate, USCT
• War of 1812 Service Records and Pension Files
  

  Example WWII Draft Registration Card

• WWII “Old Man’s Draft” Registration Cards
• Vietnam Veterans Memorial
• View the most recent list of new and updated titles

Here we are, one hundred million images strong, looking eagerly toward the next hundred million. At the pace our team is digitizing and scanning, it will certainly happen sooner than we think. You can catch up on all of Fold3’s significant achievements here on the Fold3 HQ Blog.

We know this information—and more—from a draft registration card signed by Bost. It’s one of over a million recently added images in Fold3’s newest collection of WWII Draft Registration Cards. By the end of the war, there were five more registrations, including the “Old Man’s Draft” Registration (also on Fold3), plus an “Extra Registration” for American men living abroad.

A Second Registration was taken on July 1, 1941—still prior to U.S. involvement in the war—for men who had reached the age of 21 since the first registration, less than nine months earlier. Clifton Ferris Edgerton was born in 1920 and turned 21 on June 11. He was a free-lance writer, living in New York City. He registered at a draft board in Duplin County, NC, and provided similar information, adding that he had a scar on his forehead. What his registration card doesn’t tell us is that he’s buried in the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery and Memorial in Belgium. He died on September 19, 1944. He was a sergeant with the 87th Armored Field Artillery Battalion.

The Fold3 description for World War II Draft Registration Cards provides more details about the various registrations and more images and stories. Currently, draft registration cards from North Carolina are the first to become available on Fold3.

Start searching the WWII Draft Registration Cards.

However, this collection includes more than just photos of people. My favorites are of buildings (being an architecture buff), and it has been fun to cull them out and then research whether or not the buildings still stand today. Many, of course, have fallen prey to the ravages of that war, or to the time that has passed since it ended. Some have pleasantly endured.

Some of the enduring buildings are famous, such as our nation’s Capitol and Ford’s Theater. Others are not quite so famous, with a sampling below.

President’s Box at Ford’s Theater (Fold3 image):

Petersburg Virginia Courthouse (Fold3 image):

Gate to Evergreen Cemetery, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (Fold3 image):

General Robert E. Lee’s Richmond Residence (Fold3 image; no public domain modern image available, but Google 707 East Franklin Street, Richmond, Virginia, and check out the modern “street view”):

My favorite building so far, however, is one I am reasonably certain has not survived the nearly century and a half since its construction. It is a log church constructed by the 50th New York Engineers in Petersburg, Virginia. Care and creativity show in every part of it. The branches used to create the “window panes”, the detailing on the base of the spire, even the little cap on the post at the front-left of the image suggest the engineers in the 50th had a lot of fun designing and building this church, fun that was probably hard to come by in the midst of that decimating conflict.

Modern images from Wikimedia Commons.

All other photos from the Fold3.com Civil War Photos collection.