Your response reminds me to mention another factor in researching Confederate service records, especially for genealogists searching for grandpa -- spelling conventions.

The accuracy of spelling names on a company muster roll was very much dependent on the education, literacy and penmanship of the company first sergeant and regimental adjutant, and to a lesser degree on the competence of the War Department clerks who tried to decipher the handwriting.

Very often, researchers will do a search for a specific name, using the correct spelling, and draw a blank. You really need to be as creative in your search as the first sergeant was with his spelling. Look for all the permutations you can think of. I have been able to mitigate some of this problem by putting together a database containing the name of every soldier known to have served from Arkansas, including those who served in regiments in other States, and correlating the various spellings. This is especially helpful when tracking a man from one regiment to another.

And I guess one final tip for researchers is bear in mind that many, many men may have had the same name as grandpa. I've had to point this out to several people who were convinced that grandpa served in a dozen different regiments (often in three different armies at the same time). That is why I stress that the most important thing to include in your search parameters, after the name, is the county in which grandpa lived. That will almost invariably help to pinpoint exactly which John Smith is grandpa.

Finally, your remarks about recent research is correct. We have found more and more Arkansas companies that were attached to regiments from other States -- in particular, Tennessee, Louisiana, Missouri, Texas and the Indian Territory. Even found one attached to a Kentucky regiment. According the Arkansas CSRs, these men never served in the Civil War; but by cross-checking records from other States, we've found hundreds of Arkansas boys. For that reason, we're going to expand our webpage to include those other States.