Introduction page from Indiana Civil War Veterans: Transcription of the Death Rolls of the Department of Indiana, Grand Army of the Republic, 1882-1948

This page was formerly on line at ngpublications.com

Department of Indiana, Grand Army of the Republic, 1882-1948

The Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) was founded in 1866 in Illinois and became the largest association of Civil War Union veterans. The G.A.R.’s national membership reached its peak in 1890 at 409,489; membership in the Department of Indiana reached its peak in 1889 at 25,173. As the veterans died, the membership inevitably declined. The national membership dropped to 213,901 in 1910 and 16,597 in 1930. The last surviving G.A.R. member died in 1956. (See Appendix C for a roster of the annual membership of the Department of Indiana and the national organization.)

Those eligible for membership were: "Soldiers and sailors of the United States Army, Navy or Marine Corps, who served between April 12, 1861, and April 9, 1865, in the war for the suppression of the rebellion, and those having been honorably discharged therefrom after such service, and of such state regiments as were called into active service and subject to the orders of U.S. general officers, between the dates mentioned. No person shall be eligible to membership who has, at any time, borne arms against the United States."*

The G.A.R. was organized in departments, most of which comprised one state. These departments published annual reports describing their activities for the preceding year. The Journal of the 4th Annual Session of the Indiana Department, Grand Army of the Republic, published in 1883, was the first of these annual reports to contain a death roll of the department’s members, or "comrades." (This death roll contains only 26 names.) Thereafter, death rolls were published annually in the Journal of the Annual Session. (The title of the publication varies.) The final death roll for the Department of Indiana appears in the Journal of the 69th Annual Encampment, published in 1948.

To compile these death rolls, the department requested each of the local chapters, known as "posts," to submit a death roll of its members. Compliance with this request varied from post to post and year to year; some posts submitted incomplete rolls or none at all. The department death rolls published in the Journal usually contain the comrade’s name, rank, company, regiment or ship, age, date of death, and the number of the post to which he belonged.

This transcription of the Department of Indiana death rolls was compiled primarily from Journals in the holdings of the University of Illinois Library (Urbana) and the Library of Congress, and contains records of more than 22,000 comrades, who served in Civil War units from thirty-one states. (A statistical summary of the states from which these comrades served appears in Appendix E.)

In transcribing these death rolls, I made every effort to record the information accurately and completely, thus it is not necessary to consult the original death rolls for additional information. Since the ranks and regiments in the original death rolls were not recorded in a uniform manner, I standardized this information as much as possible. For example, in the original death rolls "Indiana Volunteer Infantry" is variously recorded as "Ind. Vol. Inf.," "Ind. V.I.," and "Ind. V. Inf." In this transcription, I consistently recorded these entries as "Ind. Vol. Inf." Occasionally the abbreviation "I.V.I." was used in the original death rolls, presumably to indicate "Indiana Volunteer Infantry." When this could be verified by consulting other sources, I recorded these entries as "Ind. Vol. Inf." When it could not be verified, I recorded the entries as "I.V.I. [Ind. Vol. Inf.?]." When I had any doubt regarding the correct interpretation of an entry, I recorded the information exactly as it appears in the original death roll. Information supplied by me that is not in the original death rolls appears in brackets.

To facilitate sorting, I recorded names such as "La Force" and "Van Gilder" as "LaForce" and "VanGilder," respectively. Occasionally the Journal includes memorial sketches of comrades that contain additional information about the individual. I transcribed these memorial sketches in their entirety in Appendix D. I added several cross references in cases in which it appears likely that a member’s name was inaccurately recorded in the original death rolls. The final column contains the number and year of the Journal from which the entry was extracted. Appendix A contains a roster listing the number, name, and location of each post.

Users of this transcription should note the following: The death rolls in the Journal are stated to contain the deaths for the year preceding its publication. The death roll in each Journal usually contains a title on the first page that reads "Roll of Honor for the Year . . ." Within this death roll, entries for each comrade usually contain the month and day of the death, but not the year. In this transcription, the year from the title of the death roll has been supplied for each entry in that death roll. For example, the twenty-ninth annual encampment of the Department of Indiana was held May 19–21, 1908. The death roll published in the Journal of the 29th Encampment is titled "Roll of Honor, 1907." A death date of January 10 in this death roll has been recorded in this transcription as January 10, 1907. However, it appears likely that occasionally the original death rolls include some submissions of deaths from the early months of the same year of the publication of the Journal, in addition to those from the year preceding the publication. Thus, the death date January 10 in the "Roll of Honor, 1907" published in the Journal of the 29th Encampment may actually be a record of a death that occurred on January 10, 1908, which would have been recorded in this transcription as occurring on January 10, 1907. These cases appear to be infrequent.

Researchers interested in acquiring selected data in this book arranged in another way (i.e., all the members of a particular post; all the members of a particular regiment) may contact me at dennis@ngpublications.com.

*Membership application of W.A. Hequembourg in Ransom Post No. 131, Department of Missouri, January 9, 1892, Grand Army of the Republic Collection, Missouri Historical Society Archives, St. Louis.