PENNSYLVANIA HISTORICAL AND MUSEUM COMMISSION GUIDE TO CIVIL WAR HOLDINGS 2009 Edition—Information current to January 2009 Dr. James P. Weeks and Linda A. Ries Compilers This survey is word-searchable in Adobe Acrobat. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………..page 3 Introduction by Dr. James P. Weeks………………………………….………...page 4 How to Use this Guide….………………………………………………………page 6 Abbreviations………….……………………..………………………….………page 7 Bureau of Archives and History State Archives Division, Record Groups………………………………..……....page 8 State Archives Division, Manuscript Groups…………………………………...page 46 State Archives Division, Affiliated Archives (Hartranft) ………………………page 118 PHMC Library …………………….……………………………………………page 119 Bureau of The State Museum of Pennsylvania Community and Domestic Life Section……………….………………………..page 120 Fine Arts Section……………………………………….…….…………...…… page 120 Military History Section……………………………….……..…………………page 126 Bureau of Historic Sites and Museums Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum………………………….……..…..page 131 Drake Well Museum Eckley Miner’s Village Erie Maritime Museum Landis Valley Museum Old Economy Village Pennsylvania Military Museum Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania Bureau for Historic Preservation State Historical Markers Program………………………………………………page 137 National Register of Historic Places and Register of Historical Landmarks……………………………….………………. ………………….…page 137 3 Acknowledgements This survey is a result of the PHMC Scholar-in-Residence (SIR) Program. In 2001, Diane Reed, Chief of the Commission’s Publications and Sales Division proposed that a book be created telling the story of Pennsylvania during the Civil War using the vast holdings of the PHMC. In order to create the book, an overview of the PHMC Civil War holdings was necessary. A SIR collaborative project was funded early in 2002, and Dr. James P. Weeks of the Pennsylvania State University History Department was chosen to create the survey, working with Linda Ries of the Archives staff. They used as a starting point of reference the in-house Guide to Civil War Collections at the Pennsylvania State Archives compiled in the summer of 2001 by intern Douglas Royer. Dr. Weeks worked from May to October of 2002, reviewing documents at the Archives, and artifacts at PHMC sites and museums for pertinent Civil War material. He reviewed and updated information already written, and wrote scholarly annotations for collections, artifacts, manuscripts, and records series where there were none. His work is therefore a gathering, combination, editing, and critical analysis of collection and series descriptions compiled by examining original holdings, information from the Archives’ web site, taken from PHMC Registrar information files, or by visiting various PHMC-owned sites around the state. To this are added extensive descriptions of the Civil War era diaries found in the Archives by Dr. Louis Waddell. This survey is therefore a compilation of the work of several people, and is current in content to April 2003. Jim Weeks and I would like to thank the many staff members of the PHMC who helped make this possible, including the Archives staff, especially Richard Saylor and Louis Waddell, and PHMC staff John Zwierzyna, Joseph Horvath, Lee Stevens, Bruce Bazelon, Bruce Bomberger, Susan Beates, Chester Kulesa, David Dubick, Kurt Bell, and Mary Jane Miller. Christie Balmer typed portions of the text. To our knowledge, this is the first PHMC-wide holdings inventory of a topic of any kind. It is our hope this will be a useful reference tool for our vast Civil War resources. Linda A. Ries, May 1, 2003 4 Introduction In the decades following the Civil War, veterans, politicians, and patriotic citizens remembered Pennsylvania's dedication to the Union cause. Indeed, Pennsylvania played as pivotal a role in preserving the Union as it had in creating it eight decades before, when it earned the nickname "keystone" of the colonies' insurgency. On the way to earning the sobriquet anew during the Civil War, the Commonwealth marshaled vast human and material resources. Over 340,000 Pennsylvanians served the Union cause in every significant action, while the state's diverse industries produced foodstuffs, small arms, artillery, uniforms, leather items, tents, flags, and other material necessary for waging war. Some of the most influential wartime leaders hailed from Pennsylvania, including Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Major General George G. Meade, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, and Governor Andrew Curtin. Pennsylvania mustered more African American troops than any other northern state (8,612), and rural and urban women aided the war effort through benevolent work. Moreover, unlike most other northern states, Pennsylvania suffered the shock of war on several occasions. Gettysburg, the war's greatest battle, became the symbolic center for reconciling North and South and negotiating the war's memory afterward. But the memory of heroism, sacrifice, and devotion to the national cause crowded out memories of a different sort. These were less reassuring memories of other civil struggles within Pennsylvania that resulted from the war. Postwar amnesia clouded the fact that Pennsylvanians were hardly united in their support of the war. Not only did industries rely on southern trade before the war, many Pennsylvanians had kinship ties south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Pennsylvania's Democratic leanings before the war also militated against a war pursued by a Republican administration. The Commonwealth's strong base of immigrants and farmers resented centralized authority and felt little loyalty to a distant government. Only dimly aware of the great national issues cleaving the nation, they cared little about the integrity of the Union or the evil of slavery. The war's protracted nature only made its senselessness more manifest to them. Thus in many counties, citizens resisted the draft and listened to vitriolic Democratic critics of the Lincoln administration. Other forgotten memories reflected home front dilemmas stirred by the crucible of war. The sudden growth of both federal and state governments, for example, resulted in conflict between states and the growing power of the national government. The tug of war between national and state power that ended with a new nation built on national sovereignty played itself out in the relationship between the Lincoln and Curtin administrations. Government power over the lives of citizens grew not only because of the draft, but as a result of measures to deal with the war's destruction and displacement of citizens. Other memories of the war failed to dovetail with the narrative of selfless sacrifice. Many Pennsylvanians, for example, thrived economically in a variety of industries that the war stimulated. Scholarship needs to revive and address such memories to produce an understanding of Pennsylvania's Civil War appropriate for the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, the number of worthwhile studies on Pennsylvania and the Civil War remains embarrassingly small. The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC), the Commonwealth's official repository of memories, offers materials to help scholars weave a more complete tapestry of the great struggle. Included in the following pages is an inventory of the PHMC's archival and museum resources related to the Civil War. The PHMC’s Bureau of Archives and History, Division of Archives and Manuscripts (State Archives) distinguishes between Record Groups (RGs), or documents generated by state agencies, and Manuscript Groups (MGs), documents of private origin. Objects from The State Museum of Pennsylvania are arranged alphabetically by type of object (e.g., uniforms); each item includes its accession number as a finding aid. Although we have attempted to include all State Archives’ records and manuscript holdings relating to the Civil War, The State Museum items have been more difficult to enumerate, and those listed are selected from thousands more in the collections for their historic importance to Pennsylvania and 5 the Civil War. Many are significant for their associations to important personages or events, while others illustrate the variety of military goods contributed to the war effort by Pennsylvania industries. A number of the PHMC's historic properties around the state under the administrative care of the Bureau of Historic Sites and Museums possess both valuable Civil War archival and artifactual items. Each site's objects and archives are listed after The State Museum of Pennsylvania. The PHMC's State Archives is a valuable resource for contemporary scholarship that examines the Civil War as two societies at war rather than simply tactics, strategy, or politics. Some Record Group (RG) series generated as part of military administration include materials that open a window on the home front. In the substantial RG-19, Records of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, for example, records relate to militia muster, the draft, conscientious objectors, soldiers' homes, and pensions. Letters in the copious general correspondence file of the Adjutant General's Office offer glimpses of life on the home front and reasons for draft resistance. Did the Lincoln administration's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus encourage some Pennsylvanians to report the "suspicious" activity of undesirable neighbors? Some correspondence in the file suggests so. The Surgeon General's files include diet recommendations and examinations of candidates for regimental surgeon, as well