Alan,

My point was and is to enable the person to familiarize themselves with all of the avenues of information that are available. If you take away that option by saying that the records don't contain the information needed, then a person won't consult them, which would be a travesty as most I have viewed from Louisiana do in fact contain the information requested, albeit generally in the form of ammunition not actual weapon types listed.

If the person has no luck in finding it, they generally pop back on the board to ask for additional sources, but they did look. Who would have thought when I looked through the Confederate Land Grant Applications that I would find a mention of some of the LA. troops using carbines at the Battle of Baton Rouge, much less loaning one to General Clark? While that tidbit is the exception, if I would have not looked at that source, I would not have known.

As to using the quartermaster as a focus of research, yes, you will find a lot of forms, tents, etc. listed, but when I looked at the quartermaster of the 3rd LA. it contained they very information about ammunition I noted, so if you don't look at those records as a general rule of habit, a person would have missed that extremely detailed information about the weapons that unit was using.

The very reason that I compiled the aforementioned document for the 1862 Corinth reenactment is that I had seen the guidelines for the event which had exactly the same equipage listed that could be used for it as had been listed for the 1864 Mansfield event before that with the single exception of not mentioning a single item, the Houston Depot cartridge box. That was an example of an easy out instead of looking at more sources. I can tell you now that if I hadn't gleaned information from a variety of sources, some of which were only probable as to having the information I wanted, then it wouldn't have been as extensive.