83rd PV, Gaines Mill and the beginning of the Overland Campaign.:





The forms look hand made. Does anyone know what the red or blue pencil marks sre for???  

--Last edited by grumpydave on 2008-06-14 18:50:33 --

Dave,

I think John Deeben mentioned they are from clerks checking the pension records etc and prehaps verifying that the name has been checked off some type of list.

Looks like Pvt. Thomas Kibane was listed as killed but later transferred to the VRC.   I bet you Mr. Kibane had a hell of a time fixing that mess up.   It had to be a paper nightmare for him.

On the first page it appears the blue and red check marks are made with pencil.  Starting with item 11 on the second page the red writing on the left side of the page seems to have been gone over a second time with red pencil.  

Great stuff.  FWIW, the only casualty returns I've ever seen were hand-ruled, though the medical staff may have had pre-printed.  

For example, there's this from the journal of Theodore Ayrault Dodge:

March 30th [1863] “The signs of moving culminate.  This A.M. Lieut. Schwerin told me with a long face that blanks were being prepared with columns headed ‘killed,’ ‘wounded by shell,’ ‘by sabre,’ ‘by rifle ball,’ ‘by bayonet,’ &c. &c, which no doubt produced sundry dismal visions to his mind’s eye.”

(Schwerin -- a name shared with one of Frederick the Great's field marshals -- was to be soon, like his illustrious ancestor, killed in action.)

Though I don't know the use of blue and red pencils, these were bought by the dozen or half-dozen by the War Department bureaux during the war, at $2 the dozen in 1864.  When I first joined the government in 1977, GSA still supplied these odd half-and-half implements (one end red, the other blue), though I never saw one used.

I noticed those blue check marks are sloped opposite to what we would normally do. Left handed?  

Quote :

When I first joined the government in 1977, GSA still supplied these odd half-and-half implements (one end red, the other blue), though I never saw one used.

I remember those bi-color pencils, and remember the red ends were used up with the blue end being rarely sharpened. For someone, somewhere, they must have had a meaning. Probably a Skilcraft product, but that is just a guess.

The little thing that looks like a watermark in the upper left corner is a simple pressmark, much like a notary public's seal. If you see one of those on a document outside of NARA, that generally means the document was stolen.