Copyright Notice: This article is from the Encyclopedia of North Carolina edited by William S. Powell. Copyright © 2006 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.

by Weymouth T. Jordan Jr. and Wiley J. Williams, 2006

<i>Roster of North Carolina troops in the war between the states</i>, by John W. Moore. Published 1882 by Ashe & Gatling, Raleigh, N.C. Presented on Archive.org.
Roster of North Carolina troops in the war between the states, by John W. Moore. Published 1882 by Ashe & Gatling, Raleigh, N.C. Presented on Archive.org.
A Roster of North Carolina Troops in the War between the States, by Confederate veteran John Wheeler Moore, was an undertaking by the state of North Carolina in 1881 to publish a list of its Confederate soldiers. The four volumes of Moore's Roster, as it came to be called, include the names of 106,498 soldiers-about 70 percent of the state's Confederate troops-and are arranged by military unit. The last volume, after identifying the regiments and separate battalions, lists general and staff officers or North Carolinians in the Confederate navy and elsewhere. For each individual recorded, the roster generally gives rank, date, and county of enlistment. Remarks about promotions, desertions, injuries, capture, and death in battle are sometimes noted.

The North Carolina Civil War Roster Project began in 1961 under the auspices of the North Carolina Confederate Centennial Commission and in 1965 was transferred to the State Department of Archives and History, now the Division of Archives and History of the Department of Cultural Resources. Its purpose is to publish histories of all North Carolina units raised during the war, as well as rosters containing the names and service records of members. When completed, the series, entitled North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, will comprise 17 individually indexed volumes, each providing histories and rosters of at least four regiments and service records of approximately 7,500 men. An eighteenth volume, a master index, will give the names of approximately 130,000 North Carolina military personnel listed in North Carolina Troops and the volumes and pages on which their service records appear.

Louis H. Manarin headed the Civil War Roster Project from 1961 until February 1970, when Weymouth T. Jordan Jr. took over the editorship. Rosters are arranged numerically by regiment and then alphabetically by company. A field and staff section precedes the company roster for each regiment. Within each company roster, officers and enlisted men, excluding captains, appear alphabetically in separate sections. Captains and field and staff personnel are listed by date of rank. Each name is followed by a service record of approximately 100 words that includes, if known, the soldier's county of birth and residence, his age and occupation at the time of enlistment, his promotion record, whether he was wounded, captured, or killed, and whether he deserted or died of disease.

The Civil War Roster Project had published 15 volumes by 2006. Volumes 1 and 2 cover artillery and cavalry units, respectively; volumes 3-15 contain rosters and histories of infantry units. Volume 16 will present additional Confederate infantry regiments, and volume 17 will contain rosters of miscellaneous Confederate units such as the junior and senior reserves, militia, Home Guard, navy, and marines. It will also include North Carolina Federal troops (four regiments of African American soldiers and four of whites) and many North Carolinians who served in units from other states.

Reference:

C. F. W. Coker, North Carolina Civil War Records: An Introduction to Printed and Manuscript Sources (1977).

Additional resources:

North Carolina. General Assembly; Moore, John Wheeler. Roster of North Carolina troops in the war between the states Vol 1. Raleigh: Ash & Gatling. 1882. https://archive.org/details/rosternorthcaro00moorgoog (accessed October 31, 2014).

Moore, John W. (John Wheeler). Roster of North Carolina troops in the war between the states Vol. 2. Raleigh: Ash & Gatling. 1882. https://archive.org/details/05913252.3310.emory.edu (accessed October 31, 2014).

Moore, John W. (John Wheeler). Roster of North Carolina troops in the war between the states Vol. 3. Raleigh: Ash & Gatling. 1882. https://archive.org/details/05913252.3311.emory.edu (accessed October 31, 2014).

Moore, John W. (John Wheeler). Roster of North Carolina troops in the war between the states Vol. 4. Raleigh: Ash & Gatling. 1882. https://archive.org/details/05913252.3312.emory.edu (accessed October 31, 2014).

Image Credit:

Moore, John W. (John Wheeler). Roster of North Carolina troops in the War between the states Vol. 3. Raleigh, [N.C.]: Ashe & Gatling. 1882. https://archive.org/details/rosterofnorthcar03moor (accessed October 31, 2014).

Citation

Jordan, Weymouth T., Jr. and Wiley J. Williams. "Civil War Rosters." NCpedia. Encyclopedia of North Carolina, University of North Carolina Press. Accessed on December 15th, 2024. https://www.ncpedia.org/civil-war-rosters.