Box 4181, Silver Spring, MD 20904), has issued these lists showing the units that received specific arms. Mallory, under the designation Springfield Research Service (P.O. One assiduous private researcher has published lists of serial numbers, including some for the Civil War. The latter can be sometimes be found in the privately held records of the companies involved, such as the Firearms Division of Colt Industries in Hartford, Connecticut. Moreover, the side arms of commissioned infantry officers are not shown. No comparable Confederate lists are known. Other arms or equipment, such as swords, saddles, cannon, or muskets, are not traceable in this way. Other sources, such as Summary Statements of Quarterly Returns of Ordnance and Ordnance Stores on Hand in Regular and Volunteer Army Organizations, 1862 - 1867, 1870 - 1876 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M1281), must be consulted for that additional information. Peters of Company L, First Connecticut Cavalry, in 1863.įrequently the lists of serial numbers will not identify the make or model of the arm, only the type (pistol or carbine). One or two private researchers, with prodigious patience and dedication, have systematically searched through hundreds of these volumes and compiled a number of lists of serial numbers that now and then enable a proud possessor to say (for example) that Colt number 120055 was issued to Sgt. No inventory or other finding aid states that fact it is not apparent from a casual scanning of the records and there is no index or list that will disclose where such things will be found. Scattered few and far between among the bound unit records of some Union volunteer cavalry and artillery units (RG 94, entries 113 and 114) in the records of the Adjutant General's Office ( not the Ordnance Office) are occasional lists by serial number of pistols and carbines. However, the intensity of desire, coupled with the willingness to spend countless hours personally searching, can accomplish the seemingly impossible. It is not possible for the Archives to locate a record by serial number for any weapon of any type. No series listing serial numbers of Civil War - era weapons were among the records of the Office of the Chief of Ordnance when those records were transferred to the National Archives. That is not true- at least, not entirely true.

Those familiar with twentieth-century records often assume that official records of some kind will enable the possessor of a particular Colt percussion Army Model 1860 revolver (for example) to learn the name and unit of the person who received serial number 120055.

The information most sought after in ordnance records is data on the issuance of arms by serial number. 4 | 'War in an Age of Wonders' By Michael P. Firearms Genealogy The Impossible Takes Longer

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