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From the CWSS web site:
The Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System
is a computerized database containing very basic facts about servicemen
who served on both sides during the Civil War. The initial focus
of the CWSS is the Names Index Project, a project to enter
names and other basic information from 5.4 million soldier records
in the National Archives. The facts about the soldiers are being
entered from records that are indexed to many millions of other
documents about Union and Confederate Civil War soldiers maintained
by the National
Archives and Records Administration.
Other information will include: histories of regiments in both
the Union and Confederate Armies, links to descriptions of 384 significant
battles of the war, and other historical information. Additional
information about soldiers, sailors, regiments, and battles, as
well as prisoner-of-war records and cemetery records, will be added
over time.
The Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System (CWSS) is a cooperative
effort by the National Park Service (NPS) and several other public
and private partners, to computerize information about the Civil War. The
goal of the CWSS is to increase the American people's understanding
of this decisive era in American history by making information about
it widely accessible. The CWSS will enable the public to make a
personal link between themselves and history.
The data entry phase of the 5.4 million soldier records has already
been completed by volunteers across the country. The records
now are going through the enormous and tedious task of being edited
for accuracy, consistency, etc. by two of our main partners, the
Genealogical Society of Utah
(GSU) and the Federation
of Genealogical Societies (FGS). Once the data is edited, the
NPS staff converts the final edited version into an Oracle database
for use in the CWSS on the Internet.
The CWSS database currently contains over 5 million soldier names
from over 30 states and territories.
The July 29, 1993 Springfield News-Leader has an article
with a brief overview of the CWSS.
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