Record of Events

The Record of Events (ROE) documents the activity of a volunteer military company (Co D, 74th PA Volunteer Infantry), or the regiment (74th PA Volunteer Infantry) during a war. In the 1890s confirming service provided by a volunteer soldier took an unacceptable amount of time (years). Gen. Ainsworth was assigned the daunting task of making the federal bureaucracy more efficient. The process Gen. Ainsworth developed created several records:

  • Compiled Military Service Record (CMSR): documents each occurrence of a soldier in the company records
  • Carded Medical Records: reports each mention of a soldier in the medical records
  • Company ROE: records the activities and movements of a specific company
  • Regimental ROE: records the activities and movements of the entire regiment

The Record of Events cards do not mention individual soldiers by name.  Instead, they provide information about the activities of company and regiment the soldier served in.  The information found in the ROE’s when combined with the specific information for the soldier found in the CMSR, Carded Medical Records, and Pension Packet will assist in reconstructing your veterans activities during a war.

Does every unit have a ROE? No, these records were created during Gen. Ainsworth’s years-long project, and the project was discontinued before “regular military” CMSR’s and ROE’s were created (note, carded medical records were created for regular army units).

Are any Records of Events online? Yes! FamilySearch.org has digitized two microfilm collections (not indexed) for the Civil War.

  • M594 – Compiled Records Showing Service of Military Units in Volunteer Union Organizations, located here.
  • M861 – Compiled Records showing Service of Military Units in Confederate Organizations, located here.

Record of Events for other wars may also be found online at fold3 and other websites that have digitized versions of CMSR’s for units during a war.  To determine if ROE’s have been digitized and published online, browse the collection.  The ROE packets for the regiment and each company are located at the front of the collection, before any of the regimental soldiers individual CMSR packets.  If the ROE for the volunteer unit your veteran served as a member of are not online, Rumblesoft can retrieve the records for you from the National Archives. 

As with a CMSR, if a soldier served in multiple regiments or multiple wars, than multiple ROE’s will assist with determining his service during each war.  To order the Company and/or Regimental ROE, please fill out this form, and email it to sandy@rumblesoft.com, along with a copy of the CMSR jacket or pension index card for the veteran.  Upon receipt of your email, RumbleSoft will schedule your ROE retrieval.  Details on how our record retrieval process works are outlined here.