Rhonda, it goes from easy to very difficult. It's easiest, of course, when the muster rolls state the man's place of residence -- that's a no-brainer. After that, it involves detective work. The first clue I look for is the place of enlistment -- those who enlisted in Arkansas are potential Arkansans who I can usually identify by referring to census records, land records, and other civil records. After that, I look at the date of enlistment -- normally, Arkansas refugees were not present when the regiment in question was first organized. They generally enlisted later in the war. And finally, after eliminating all the men known or presumed to be residents of the state where the regiment was raised, I run the remaining names through various records to see if I can find a match.

To further verify that the name in a (for example) Kansas regiment is the Arkansan I think he is, I look to my database to see if he had deserted or been discharged from an Arkansas regiment sometime before he showed up in the Kansas regiment. Goodspeed's biographies are another good source for verification.

I'm a fanatic about verification. When I find a soldier in a "foreign" regiment who appears to be an Arkansan, I enter him in my database with an indication that the information is unverified and only appears on the muster roll. I don't mark him as a "fer sure" until I can get a minimum of two non-regimental sources of verification.

Like I said, it takes a lot of detective work. It's only easy when the regiment I'm looking at was thoughtful enough to list the man's place of residence. Kansas regiments were very good about that -- the wrinkle is that Arkansas refugees who enlisted in another state listed their residence as the place they fled to, not where they fled from. Then it's back to the Sherlock Holmes hat and magnifying glass.