Nancy Calhoun wrote an article entitled “Books and More: Researching a Civil War ancestor” which is posted at the October 4, 2009 muskogeephoenix.com website. In it, she writes about resources available for tracing your Oklahoma Civil War ancestor. She recommends a number of great sources. Following is a teaser:
Service records for those who served in the Confederate Army are also available from the National Archives. However, these are often very limited. They may exist of as little as one record of pay.
While pensions were granted on the federal level for the Union veterans, Confederate pensions came later and were granted to the veterans and their widows on the state level. An online index is available for Oklahoma Confederate Pensions on the Web site for the Oklahoma Department of Libraries. Muskogee Public Library also has the index in book form. It also has the microfilm of these pension applications which started in 1917. These applications contain service information, injuries, dates of marriages, affidavits from fellow soldiers, and other information.
The pension applications are not just for those who served from or in Oklahoma. If a veteran served in another state, then moved to Oklahoma, his pension application would be made in Oklahoma. Check the index for not only ancestors, but for their siblings and cousins. Those serving in the Civil War often served along side their brothers, neighbors and other relatives.
The 1890 Oklahoma Territory U.S. Census is one of the few which survives for that year. The census forms has a special category for Union Army Veterans and also tells the unit in which they served. These are available through ancestry. Volunteers for the Oklahoma Historical Society have recently completed an index of this special census and it will soon be available. Veterans of the Civil War were still comparably young with families in 1890 and were often among those seeking a new start in a new place.
One new book that Nancy does not mention in her article is Bill Dollarhide’s new Genealogical Resources of the Civil War Era. This 
excellent new volume reviews twenty-five (25) resources for Oklahoma alone. One of the things that makes this book unique is that Dollarhide attempts to give resources for not only finding finding records of those men who were involved in the conflict, but records that will help the researcher find their families during what he calls the “Civil War Era, 1861-1869.” For more information, click here. Just for fun, I’ll throw in a FREE 38 Generation Wall Chart ($9.45 value) for anyone ordering Bill’s Civil War book – and entering “38 Wall Chart” in the “Order Notes” field at checkout.
