Clara Barton’s Rolls of Missing Men
After the Civil War, there were thousands of men missing. Clara Barton took it upon herself to spearhead the search for missing Union soldiers. She received over 63,000 requests for help and ultimately located over 22,000 missing men, dead and alive.
Barton used a variety of strategies to locate the missing: she reached out to friends that would have known the soldiers or their battalion, she knew some of the missing personally, others she had confirmation of their death in prison camps from burial records. For those she couldn’t find, she published their names, organized by state, in a “Roll of Missing Men.” These rolls were distributed around the country. People wrote back with information about the missing men, and she found countless others this way.
Throughout her three year search, Barton published the Rolls of Missing Men five times. The contents of those rolls have been transcribed in this searchable database.