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PATH I: Investigating
Civil War Soldiers from Beverly
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Archivist
Jim Owens explains his role at the National Archives
before our tour and
Civil War research.
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At the regional Branch of the National
Archives in Waltham we investigated census data on microfilm
to determine specific demographic information on many of Beverly’s
750 Civil War participants. Jim Owens, head of User
Services, welcomed PATH and explained how historians, genealogists,
and other researchers use the facility. Much of
the information at the National Archives is stored on microfilm,
including the United States Census, and Immigrant Passenger
Lists. For our research we brought our list of Civil War
soldiers, which we hoped to find in the 1860 Census.
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Tufts
University History Professor Reed Ueda helps PATH students interpret
the 1860 United States census on microfilm.
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Reed Ueda, author of Postwar Immigrant
America, showed us how to start our research with the Soundex
microfilm. We used the Soundex to find the soldiers
in the census. Researching using the census turned out
to be not as easy as looking in an index and referring to a
page number. We realized that we had our work cut out
for us! Now we began the process of putting together
the Beverly Civil War Soldiers Database.
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