
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 29, 1993                   TAG: 9307290136
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

CIVIL WAR ROLL ENTERED IN MEMORY

THE FACE of the youth peering earnestly from beneath a Confederate cap is familiar to many readers of books or viewers of documentaries about the Civil War. Wednesday, that boy, a Louisiana lad who died in Virginia, became the first to have his name listed name in what will be a nationwide computer file of those ancestors who fought.

\ The first name - Confederate soldier Edwin F. Jemison, killed at age 18 - was punched into a computer Wednesday to launch a database of the estimated 3.5 million Americans who fought in the Civil War.

By early 1996, people who believe their ancestors fought for the blue or the gray should be able to look up their names in the Civil War Soldiers System. Computers at the National Park Service's 28 Civil War sites will be available to access the system.

"It's been estimated that up to 100 million people may be descendants from Civil War soldiers," said John F. Peterson, project manager of the Civil War Soldiers System.

With the database, those people will be able to learn the regiment and battles their ancestors fought in, Peterson said, giving them "a personal connection to a great, historical event."

The original handwritten records, on index cards, are stored at the National Archives, which receives nearly 1,500 inquires each week relating to Civil War records.

Hundreds of genealogists, history buffs and others have volunteered to use their home computers to type the names onto computer diskettes - donating work that park service officials estimate is worth $4.5 million.

Jemison, a Louisiana soldier who died at Malvern Hill, Va., in 1862, was chosen to begin the database because his photograph is so familiar. The image of his boyish face, staring seriously into the camera from beneath a Confederate cap, has frequently appeared in books and documentaries.

Parks Service Director Roger Kennedy typed Jemison's entry during a news conference at Ford's Theatre, sight of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

The Civil War Trust, a nonprofit historical association, is raising money to pay for computer terminals in the parks.

The National Archives, the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the Genealogical Society of Utah, a corporation of the Mormon Church, also are guiding the project.

Memo: ran on A3 in the Metro edition

by CNB