Soldiers' Discharges

J. Douglas Deal (deal@oswego.Oswego.EDU)
Fri, 15 Apr 1994 09:13:43 ECT

I was perusing volumes of records in the county clerk's office (Oswego Co.,
NY) and happened upon many entitled "Soldiers' Discharges." I started to
look through the earliest, which began with discharges of Union Army
soldiers in 1865. They gave a bit of personal information about each soldier
and looked like something I could send students to use. Suddenly, I was in-
formed by an employee in the clerk's office that I could not continue to
examine these volumes because they were (are) off limits to the public.
Then I noticed that a message to this effect was indeed taped to another
shelf holding the same series of volumes. After expressing my surprise, I
apologized and left. Of course, the next thing I did was to call the clerk
of the county court on the phone to get the whole story. According to him,
the records were closed to the public by federal order sometime after WW2
because of harassment of veterans by insurance companies. But almost in the
same breath, he volunteered that he could talk with the county attorney
about my students getting access to the earliest volume only, and if he got
an affirmative response, he might permit us to use that one volume.

Not being familiar with these records and not accustomed to being denied
access to records shelved in county courthouses, I thought I would send this
question out to colleagues who know what's going on here: Does this happen
all over the country? Do most researchers get to examine the soldiers'
discharges after asking permission? Is the information provided in the
discharges easily available in some other type of record to which the public
has unimpeded access?

Doug Deal
History Dept., SUNY-Oswego