1. Summary
The Union Army data has information on the recruit's appearance. This includes a physical description of the veteran. This information is found in the Military, Pension and Medical Records and the Surgeons' Certificates. Appearance variables from the Surgeons' Certificates are additionally classified under other categories, which are the primary association. Demographic information from the Census data set can be found in the Census Demographic Characteristics User Guide.
2. Variable Groups
Collection: Military, Pension and Medical Records
Recruit's Appearance: Complexion, Eye color, Hair color, Height in feet, Height in inches, Height information date
Collection: Surgeons' Certificates
Recruit Appearance at Time of Examination: Complexion, Eye color, Hair color, Height in feet, Height in inches, Weight
Date and physical characteristic variables are qualified by a set of codes that can be found in the Quality Codes User Guide.
3. Historical Background
3.1 Original Sources
During the Civil War, information on the soldier's appearance was used for identification purposes. It is found throughout the source documents in muster rolls, descriptive books, enlistment papers, among other documents. Changes in height and their associated dates are recorded. Differences in reported height result from recording errors in the original documents, soldier's growth (since many soldiers enlisted at young ages), and the self-reporting of this information.
Civil War pensions were available for veterans with disabilities as well as for deceased veterans' widows, minor children, dependent major children, and parents. Under the Act of July 14, 1862, the first pension legislation specific to the Civil War, the veterans were eligible only for disabilities (wounds or chronic illnesses) received during wartime. The Act of June 27, 1890 changed that requirement and expanded eligibility to include disabilities not directly related to wartime experience. As a result, the number of men on the pension rolls swelled. Laws passed after 1907 changed the pension from disability-based to age-based.
When a veteran wanted to receive a pension, he would, under his attorney's supervision, submit an application/declaration. This form was sent to the Pension Bureau in Washington D.C., which reviewed the application and collected further testimony in support of the veteran's application. The decision is recorded on a claim form, which is input alongside the pension application/declaration. Veterans could, and often did, apply for a pension under several laws or submit additional applications because of an increase in disability or a dissatisfaction with the Pension Bureau's decision, therefore, records usually contain more than one pension application and claim.
Information about each pension application/declaration and claim is recorded separately. The pension board required that the veteran appear before a Board of Examining Surgeons to determine his rate of disability. Once the board had the veteran's application and the surgeons' determination of disability, they would issue their ruling-granting the pension or rejecting the claim.
A veteran's application for a pension, includes supporting documentation regarding:
- birth
- residences
- family information
- occupation at enlistment
- employment after discharge from the service
- summary of military and medical wartime experience
- affidavits from comrades, neighbors, family members, and physicians.
There are several types of dependent pensions. These are: widow, minor, parent, dependent major, and sibling. Dependent pensions include information on:
- dependent's name
- including maiden, married, remarried names
- dependent's relationship to the veteran
- dependent's age
- dependent's residence
- veteran's death
- date, cause, and burial
- marriage
Particularly important is information regarding the veteran's economic status is found in dependent pensions. For example, in order to receive a pension, a parent had to prove that her/his deceased son contributed to the support of the family in a substantial way. In such a situation, one might find an employer's affidavit testifying that the young man worked as a carpenter before enlisting and gave every nickel he earned to his mother for food. Also, to prove their economic dependency, parents might submit a letter or letters the veteran had sent home during the war which mentioned sending his army pay home for the family.
Important material is found in a variety of documents within the pension. An example is the veteran's religious affiliation. We find this type of information in several places, including the baptismal records, marriage certificates, and burial information. Nowhere in the official Pension Bureau forms is the veteran asked to state his religion. Another example is a veteran's residence. Rarely will a document in a pension state that the veteran lived at Constantia, Oswego County, NY from July 1, 1862 to May 10, 1894, but there may be an envelope in the file that gives that address on February 28, 1865. Lacking a "residences" document, we must peruse all documents, including envelopes, for addresses and dates, then piece together the veteran's residence patterns from disparate sources with accompanying quality codes. In the residence example above, the researcher would assign a quality code "9" to the date found on the envelope indicating that on the particular date recorded the recruit lived in Constantia, NY. The "9" is the code for "at present time."
Viewing the pension as a whole document allows us to roughly reconstruct a veteran's life. We do this by recording different places of residence, occupations, levels of labor force participation, health problems, family relations, and standards of living throughout the veteran's pensionable lifetime.
The CMSR of both volunteer officers and enlisted men serving in wartime show the soldier's rank, military organization, and term of service. They also include age at enlistment, place of enlistment, and place of birth, but provide no information about family. The CMSR for each recruit is an envelope consisting of cards with information about the recruit transcribed by War Department clerks. The clerks transcribed the information on the cards from muster rolls, descriptive books, returns (statistical reports submitted to the Adjutant General Office or the War Department by organizations such as hospitals or forts), hospital registers, prison records, and other records. Cards are arranged first by war, then by state, then by military unit, and finally alphabetically by the soldier's last name.
The transcription of a CMSR started soon after the Civil War when Fred C. Ainsworth assumed the duties of Adjutant General. His aim in having the military records transcribed was twofold: first, to preserve the information found on decaying original records, and second, to eliminate the serious backlog on pension applications and rulings by making claim checking easier. Initially, the cards contained the soldier's name, rank, company, regiment, and the page and volume number from which the information was obtained. This is all copied onto separate cards. Most CMSR today also include information that was added later, including POW records, casualty information, hospital register information, records of desertions, furloughs, AWOLs, and MIAs, copies of enlistment papers, and copies of surgeons' certificates of discharge for disability.
As information from the CMSR was entered into the collection screens, it was compared with information already collected. When the CMSR seriously conflicted with the pension information, we attempted to reconcile the previously entered pension data with the more straightforward CMSR. Military information that came from the CMSR was judged to be more accurate than conflicting information from the pension, which may have been retrospective and self-reported.
The Surgeons' Certificates are medical examinations of the veteran included in the Civil War pension record. The Board of Examining Surgeons evolved over time, until by 1890 it consisted of three members appointed and paid by the Department of the Interior. The primary purpose for performing a medical examination on a veteran was to determine the applicant's eligibility for pension assistance. Thus, the form and content of the medical examinations were directly related to how the pension system was administered and the resulting incentives faced by potential pension applicants.
Civil War pensions were available for veterans with disabilities as well as for deceased veterans' widows, minor children, dependent major children, and parents. Under the Act of July 14, 1862, the first pension legislation specific to the Civil War, the veteran was eligible only for disabilities (wounds or chronic illnesses) received during wartime. The Act of June 27, 1890 changed that requirement and expanded eligibility to include disabilities not directly related to wartime experience.
A veteran's pension record includes information on his birth, residences after discharge from the service, a summary of military and medical wartime experience, and family information, including a listing of spouses and children, whether living or dead. The pension file also includes the veteran's or the surviving dependent's application for a pension and the corresponding record of the Pension Bureau's action. Additionally, the file contains documents in support of the veteran's claim, including affidavits from comrades, neighbors, family members, and physicians. Because a veteran could, and often did, apply for a pension under several acts or submit additional applications because of an increase in disability or dissatisfaction with the Pension Board's decision, files usually contain more than one pension application and record of action; occasionally a pension file includes more than 20 sets of such forms.
For the Early Indicators study, the surgeons' certificate is one of the most important documents found in the veteran's pension record. In addition to providing identifying demographic and military service information, each certificate contains the statement of the claimant regarding his health and disability and some basic physiological measures such as height, weight, pulse rate, and respiration rate. In addition, the examining physicians provided numerical ratings for individual conditions and for disability in general. The bulk of the certificate contains the findings, descriptions, and diagnoses of the examining physicians.
Examining physicians were charged with a set of detailed instructions, which gave a measure of uniformity to the certificates. However, there was still substantial variation in the content of exams. Part of this variation is due to changes in examination procedures over time, but part is due to idiosyncratic variation in the methods of examining physicians. Of course, the content of an individual certificate was determined primarily by the health of the veteran being examined. Of particular importance was whether or not certain conditions qualified the applicant for pension support. In many cases, conditions were mentioned by examining physicians even if the applicant did not qualify for pension assistance.
3.2 An Initial Classification System: The Disease Screens
A fundamental challenge in making the information gathered from surgeon's certificates available for public use was the development of adequate data collection instruments, or "disease screens." The collection screens are the result of extensive analysis of the original surgeon's certificates, led by Nevin S. Scrimshaw, M.D. and Irwin H. Rosenberg, M.D. The screens were designed to give some basic structure to the data while still allowing for later modifications as more experience was amassed in the collection process. They constituted the format used by the data inputters, and also provided an initial classification scheme that organized the data for further standardization and classification. The structure of the disease screens is motivated by three primary factors. First, the data are grouped according to physiological systems (where possible). For example, there are individual screens for the cardiovascular, respiratory, genito-urinary, and gastro-intestinal systems. Variables are named in a way that identifies to which system (collection screen) they belong. For instance, variables such as c_murmur and c_enlarg are identified as cardiovascular variables because of the prefix "c_" that precedes the variables. Second, the form of the certificates themselves dictate the design of the screens. Examining physicians tended to group their observations according to disease systems. Some of these, such as cardiovascular and genito-urinary, are consistent with modern classification. Other groupings used by the physicians, however, were determined by the specific purpose of the examination, namely, to identify what were considered to be disabling conditions. Therefore, there were individual screens for diarrhea, hernias, hemorrhoids, rheumatism, and varicose veins. Organizing the screens according to the groupings, typically used by the examining physicians, considerably simplified the collection process. Finally, the grouping of different conditions is highly correlated with the disability ratings given to conditions. In general, the disease screens represented the level of detail that was commonly found in the ratings. For instance, ratings were usually given for the cardiovascular system as a whole without differentiating between different cardiovascular conditions, even though additional details were often provided about the cardiovascular system. A typical example of a physicians statement was "$8 for disease of heart." On the other hand, conditions such as hernias, chronic diarrhea, or varicose veins were given individual disease ratings. On each disease screen there is a field to enter the disability rating for that disease screen. Sometimes diseases from different screens are grouped together under a single rating amount, and at other times the only rating information provided was a single disability rating that gave the overall amount the physicians recommended the applicant receive. There are 21 main screens consisting of an entry screen and 20 individual disease screens. On the entry screen, inputters record all the identifying information concerning the veteran as well as his statement of disability to the pension board. The information provided by the physician is recorded on the 20 disease screens.
3.3 Variables
In collecting the military and disease data, multiple instances of the height variables were input. Each instance of these variables must be linked together by numerical suffixes. For example, each instance of the height in inches variable corresponds with the same instance of the height in feet variable, as demonstrated by rh_feet1 and rh_inch1. This also applies to the date variable when the height information was taken.
4. User Guide Table
| Variable Label | Variable Name | Data-Set | Source |
| ra_cplxn | Recruit's appearance- complexion | MIL | PEN: Pension Application CMSR: Company Descriptive Book Muster and Descriptive Roll Death Form Inventory of Effects Regimental Book |
| ra_cplqc | Quality code for recruit's complexion | MIL | Military Quality Codes |
| ra_eyec | Recruit's appearance- eye color | MIL | PEN: Pension Application CMSR: Company Descriptive Book Muster and Descriptive Roll Death Form Inventory of Effects Regimental Book |
| ra_eyeqc | Quality code for recruit's eye color | MIL | Military Quality Codes |
| ra_hairc | Recruit's appearance- hair color | MIL | PEN: Pension Application CMSR: Company Descriptive Book Muster and Descriptive Roll Death Form Inventory of Effects Regimental Book |
| ra_hairqc | Quality code for recruit's hair color | MIL | Military Quality Codes |
| rh_feet1 - rh_feet5 | Recruit's height- feet | MIL | PEN: Pension Application CMSR: Company Descriptive Book Muster and Descriptive Roll Death Form Inventory of Effects Regimental Book |
| rh_inch1 - rh_inch5 | Recruit's height- inches | MIL | PEN: Pension Application CMSR: Company Descriptive Book Muster and Descriptive Roll Death Form Inventory of Effects Regimental Book |
| rh_date1 - rh_date5 | Recruit's height information date | MIL | PEN: Pension Application CMSR: Company Descriptive Book Muster and Descriptive Roll Death Form Inventory of Effects Regimental Book |
| rh_fiqc1 - rh_fiqc5 | Quality code for recruit's height | MIL | Military Quality Codes |
| a_complx | Claimant's complexion | DIS | Surgeons' Certificate |
| a_eyes | Claimant's eye color | DIS | Surgeons' Certificate |
| a_hair | Claimant's hair color | DIS | Surgeons' Certificate |
| a_weight | Claimant's weight | DIS | Surgeons' Certificate |
| a_wgtqc | Quality code for claimant's weight | DIS | Surgeons' Certificate |
| a_hgtft | Claimant's height, feet | DIS | Surgeons' Certificate |
| a_hgtin | Claimant's height, inches | DIS | Surgeons' Certificate |
| a_hgtqc | Quality code for claimant's height | DIS | Surgeons' Certificate |