The
Record
Volume 14, Number 2
New Soldiers Database Identifies Missouri’s Military Men; Latest Resource for Civil War The Soldiers Database is the most recent effort by the Missouri State Archives to preserve the records that tell the story of Missouri’s unique heritage, particularly the story of the state during war. Over a half-million Missourians who served in the military from territorial times through World War I are listed in the new comprehensive database created by the Archives. The Soldiers Database includes 576,293 entries for twelve wars and military engagements in which Missouri soldiers took part. These range from such well-known wars as the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I, to the battles that were peculiar to Missouri, including the Heatherly War of 1836, the Mormon War of 1838, and the Iowa (Honey) War of 1839. In addition, a brief summary of each war appears on the website. The bulk of service cards, over 380,000 of them, record the fractured history of our state during the bloodiest of all American wars – the Civil War. The personal information on the service cards found in the database gives human faces to that turbulent time, which began during the antebellum period and continued until Reconstruction. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, allowing popular sovereignty in those territories, set the stage for a decade of border warfare that contributed to the outbreak of civil war in 1861. The militia men organized to defend Missouri’s western border against the Kansas “jayhawkers” are identified in the Soldiers Database. Known as the Southwest Expedition, they attempted to scatter the Kansas guerrillas and maintain peace.
Death Records Transferred to the Missouri State Archives For the first sixty years of statehood, there was no requirement that a birth or death be officially recorded. Although an 1883 law authorized the statewide registration of vital records, it was not mandatory and non-compliance forced its repeal in 1893. Finally, in 1909, the General Assembly truly provided for immediate and prompt registration of vital records on a statewide basis; it became effective in 1910. Pursuant to this law, all Missouri births and deaths are reported to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. In the interest of further openness, House Bill 1634, which became effective this past August, made some changes to the vital records law. The legal and physical custody of all death records created
Newsletter of the Friends of the Missouri State Archives
Fall 2004
Brief periods of peace in the late 1850s were interrupted by sporadic bouts of violence until, finally, in April 1861, the deepening sectional crisis over the expansion of slavery erupted into open warfare. In southwest Missouri, the bloody battle at Wilson’s Creek became the second major clash after Bull Run. More than 540 men were killed and over 1600 wounded in the six-hour battle. Information about those men is now readily available in the Soldiers Database, whether they fought for the Union or for the Confederacy. Although major battles in the state ended after Wilson’s Creek, the remainder of the war in Missouri saw frequent bushwhacking activities and violent skirmishes. Military organizations such as the Missouri State Militia (M.S.M.) and the Enrolled Missouri Militia (E.M.M.) were organized to maintain order within the state. About 10,000 men served in the M.S.M., and about 52,000 in the E.M.M. In total, over 109,000 Missouri men served the Union, while some 30,000 fought with the Confederacy. History books record their cumulative efforts, but the Soldiers Database offers a more personal look at these men who died for their cause. The database can be searched by an individual’s name and, a bonus for military historians, by fighting unit. It can also be analyzed by war or conflict. Images of the original service card(s) are linked to most database records, which can be accessed at http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/.
according to Missouri law and over fifty years old was transferred to the Missouri State Archives, which immediately began work on making the records more readily available. Presently, there are nearly two million individual certificates of death in this collection, but more will be added each year. Soon, copies of the records may be requested according to the Archives research guidelines. The Archives is currently imaging each death certificate. By spring 2005, the first of those images will be available on the Archives website for research, bringing an unprecedented level of accessibility to these valuable records. The scanning project will begin with the 1910 death records and proceed chronologically. The project is ongoing; scanned records will be available online as each year is completed. Online searches can be done in the following categories: name, date of death, county, and certificate number; links to the original record will be available. Eventually, these death records will join the pre-1910 birth and death records already found online at http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/birthdeath/.