He was a tall man, young and fair-haired, brought to life through physical description and thrust into battle upon making his "mark." Elie Nelson’s Volunteer Enlistment reveals he was 21 years old at the time he volunteered was born in Coffee County, Tennessee was six feet, three inches tall and had blue eyes and "light" hair. If a researcher is fortunate enough to uncover a record such as a Volunteer Enlistment, not only is there affirmation that the ancestor was, indeed, a Civil War soldier, but even more information can be found. It is possible much more can be discovered, allowing for a more vivid illustration of a soldier’s military life. On a rare occasion, there may be information concerning a promotion, capture, hospitalization or death. More often than not, however, only brief notations are made as to the date and place of enlistment and when the soldier was present at muster. Occasionally, a descendant can find a description or notation that the soldier died on a particular day. Often, when researchers delve into the Civil War compiled service records, they are disappointed with the lack of detailed information. With over 186,000 Confederate and approximately 31,000 Federal forces from Tennessee, a wealth of information was captured, recorded, and is available through a variety of documents housed in various collections. Tennessee long ago earned the nickname "The Volunteer State." Although Tennessee was divided on issues such as secession and Confederate or Federal sentiment, Tennesseans displayed no hesitancy when it came to defending their cause.
A brief look at some of the records in this unit takes the researcher from preparations before the beginning of the war to long after, when soldiers returned home and attempted to rebuild their lives and when states strove to reconstruct and restore.
A wealth of information is hidden in various collections at TSLA. The images in this collection are intended to expose researchers to the wide variety of Civil War material available at TSLA, and to provide insight into records that provide more detail than the military information generally found in mainstream Civil War research material. There exists, however, a more extensive collection of Civil War materials at the Tennessee State Library and Archives, one that was amassed through the exhaustive recordkeeping system that functioned during the Civil War. Occasionally, a muster roll might present a bit of revealing information. Typically, researchers consult the compiled service and pension application records. To genealogists and historians, finding enough information to adequately rebuild an individual’s military experience during the Civil War can sometimes be a difficult task. From transportation orders to quartermaster records, these items not only provide insight into the soldiers’ lives, they also illustrate the costs of war and sacrifices that were made from all facets of society on both the Confederate and Federal sides.
These images illustrate the extensive recordkeeping system at work during the Civil War and demonstrate the complex organizational structure needed to handle the massive accumulation of records. The images found in this section have been gathered from various manuscript collections and offer a glimpse at the wide variety of material available at the Tennessee State Library and Archives that may be of interest to those researching Civil War history and genealogy.
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