I have had the accuracy of Henderson's work discussion with Alan Pitts and several others over the past few years.

In my opinion... I have done a large amount of comparing and contrasting of the Compiled Service Records and the Georgia Confederate Veteran's and Widow's Indigent Pensions (Henderson's primary sources) as it relates to the 39th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment and found that a huge amount of data is left out or completely ignored. I have seen this when I spot checked several other regiments. If I had relied on Henderson as a source when I did my Master's Thesis I would have been in trouble. There was more than a few times when people were missing totally from Henderson's and times when those that clearly deserted were not annotated as being so.

Unfortunately, I had many researchers try to draw various conclusions from the scant data in the work. For example, there are few Army of Tennessee muster rolls that survived from April 1864 through the end of the war. I have been approached by at least two researchers that were trying to make inferences that if a soldier did not appear in any records from April 1864 until the end of the war that they deserted. They would often use Henderson's book as their primary source. This could NOT be further from the truth. I have verified that many of my soldiers in the 39th Georgia that show "no later record" after April 1864 where wounded during the Atlanta campaign.

Remember that Henderson had a team of folks helping her out and I do not believe they had a template, consistent instructions, or quality control on what to incorporate into the work. I have spoken to one of the Archivist at the Georgia State Archives about my findings several years ago. He did not indicate that anyone was working on redoing the work.

NOTHING beats spinning the microfilm yourself and carefully analyzing each record individually.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Respectfully,

Gerald D. Hodge, Jr.
M.A. Military History - Civil War Concentration