Gerald:

I look forward to your work on a much neglected Confederate regiment. I totally agree with your statement that the mere omission of a name on the Muster rolls did not equate to a desertion. The rolls for most Confederate units are woefully incomplete, particularly those for units which served in the Western armies. Records were burned or destroyed in the chaos of 1864-64, and in the final stages of the war, I am sure that the muster rolls were just not prepared. I have been fortuante in locating the day book (I guess that is the right term) of the First Sergeant for one of the companies of the Hampton Legion (for which the muster rolls for Nov 63-Aug 64, and all of 1865 are missing), and it fills in huge gaps. And newspaer casualty lists, which also are mostly incomplete, help fill in other gaps inthe "official" records. At least for the Legion, desertion was a negligible problem, but if a person took only the missing muster rolls and assumed that it meant that a person was AWOL or deserted, it woudl be a huge mistake.

Lee