30 January 2015

More Than a Compiled Service Record For Union Veteran Riley Rampley

US Civil War draft registration for Riley and John Rampley
residents of Walker Township, Hancock County, Illinois.
Digital image made from Ancestry.com .
Years ago I obtained the Compiled Military Service Record and pension record for Riley Rampley, my ancestor who was in Company D of the 78th Illinois Volunteer Infantry.

That was back in the days of paper copies. Riley's pension file is rather large and, since I have a paper copy already, I've opted to not get a digital copy at this point in time.

However I'm not certain that I have the complete Compiled Service Record as I obtained it decades ago, very early in my research. So, I've decided to have a digital copy made of the entire file.

The researcher completing the work indicated that there also is a correspondence file and a medical file for Riley and his brother John who served in the same unit. So out of curiosity I'm ordering copies of those files for the Rampley brothers who served in the 78th Illinois. We'll share those with readers as well.

As time goes on, we'll be featuring more "complete" sets of various records obtained at the National Archives, partially so that readers can see what these files typically contain. Some records tend to provide more genealogically relevant information than others. I'm hoping that these records will be representative of what types of materials certain records contain as I don't have any illustrious ancestors whose files would have probably generated more than the typical amount of paperwork.

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I'm still trying to decide whether or not to obtain the additional records from the National Archives on the commander of the unit we've discussed in "Loose Trains and Bolts in the Gut." The man injured in that incident was an uncle of my wife and the uncle's already fairly well documented. If readers are really curious, I may go ahead and order them--so let me know in the comments if you're interested in seeing what else there might be on Markham.

Riley's my great-great-grandfather and I've always had an interest in him, so I'm willing to pony up for those copies.

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