Your "Nuts and Bolts" research has helped me in many cases. That is what I was hoping to stir some interest that while the Gerdes website is excellant, it is dated and subject to eventually being lost for any number of reason with all of its data.

I know that you are preserving the raw data that you have and plan to donate that material once you have no other use for it and go to the great muster in the sky. But stuff in archives like the Nationial or State archives are not easily excessible to the smaller researchers like myself. It is almost an exclusive club that is able to access those archives for a number of reasons. What makes the Gerdes website so valuable is that it is accessable to so many.

The internet is a fragile thing. I would hate to lose the access to your database material. I have copied a lot of it to paper just to preserve what I need. I know that it is much more than you have published on the Gerdes website, because you will answer the most obscure of questions.

I doubt that we will ever be able to completely fill those 'black holes' completely because of lost materials. But I am glad to see that by cross referencing of various records that we are able to close some of those gaps.

As a point of interest according to the 1860 U.S. Census data for Arkansas there were 90,605 white males enumerated between the ages of 15 and 70 in the State of Arkansas. Think able it. That means at 85,000 plus being enlisted in the State in one side or the other that almost the entire male population of the state was personally involved.