Manuscript Database
Creator/Title
United States Army Quartermaster's Department. Field note books, 1867, undated. 2 vols.
Call No.
Mss. BG U58d / 1-2
Content
These two volumes contain the field notes of military personnel assigned to locate and identify Union soldiers' graves within the confines of the Military Department of the Tennessee, which embraced the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. The notebooks reflect the nationwide Reburial Project (1866-1870) which was initiated by a joint resolution of Congress in 1866. Coordinated by departmental quartermaster Major Edmund B. Whitman in Louisville, the regional project involved Capt. Lawrence B. Fish whose field notes dated April 3-April 22, 1867 contain information on burial sites in several Kentucky locations between Bardstown and Smithland as well as the region between Clarksville and Gallatin, Tennessee. A second, undated, notebook kept by one F. N. Field, documents soldiers' burial sites in the western portions of Kentucky and Tennessee as well as both central and northern Mississippi and northwestern Alabama. Fish's notes refer to the grave sites of several soldiers killed by the notorious Kentucky guerrilla, Capt. Henry Magruder. Field's notes include information on the battlefields of Shiloh, Parkers Cross Roads, Tennessee, and the Vicksburg campaign. There are also references to Civil War fortifications, camp sites, and hospitals in both volumes. (Note: The Reburial Project sparked the creation of national cemeteries throughout the country.)