Volunteers for the National Park Service's Civil War Soldiers and
Sailors System Web site (CWSS>) have completed the Name Index Project to post 6.3 million soldier records from 44 US states and territories. After the final million
names-belonging to soldiers from Virginia and Pennsylvania-were added
last month, a ceremony at Ford's Theatre marked the milestone.

Next up for indexing are naval personnel records, but that'll take
awhile, according to the CWSS site: "Given that the records sources
for the Navy are not as well organized as the Army records, nor are
they microfilmed, the target date for this is still to be determined."

About 18,000 African-American sailors are already cataloged on CWSS,
thanks to Department of Defense funding and work by Howard University.

The soldier data came from the General Index Cards in the National
Archives and Records Administration's Compiled Military Service
Records.

CWSS also has Civil War information such as regimental
histories and links to descriptions of nearly 400 significant battles