Compiled Military Service Records for P. F. Smith’s Regiment of Louisiana Volunteers in 1836

As you may have already read, I undertook a detailed analysis of my 4th great-grandfather’s Bounty Land Application and that required me to do a deep dive into his service with the Louisiana Volunteers at the start of the Second Seminole War in 1836. To support this research, I hired a researcher to visit NARA in Washington, DC, and obtain scans of the Compiled Military Service Records (CMSR) for the Louisiana Volunteers under Colonel Persifor Frazer Smith in 1836.

And since I invested quite a bit to obtain these records, I might as well share them with others so that no one else has to pay for them! I’m not an expert in source citations, but here’s the format I used in my research project. Feel free to adjust as needed::

Compiled Military Service Record, [name of volunteer], [rank of volunteer], [name of Captain] Company, Smith’s Regiment Volunteer Militia; Compiled military service records, with indexes, of soldiers who served in volunteer organizations enlisted for service during the Indian Wars, 1817-58; National Archives Building, Washington, DC.

Here is how my source citation turned out for my 4th great-grandfather:

I just also ask that you kindly note that you downloaded/found the record on my website. (i.e., 'Digital copy provided courtesy of everydayadventuresingenealogy.com').

You might be wondering, 'How do I know if one of these individuals is in my research?' The index is available in two places. The first is at familysearch.org. However, as mentioned in my post about my 4th great-grandfather’s service with the Louisiana Volunteers, the indexes there are mislabeled. Below is an excerpt that explains this issue and provides the correct link(s) to the index:

I located the "Index to compiled service records of volunteer soldiers who served during the Florida War in organizations from the state of Louisiana" on familysearch.org which was described as follows: "This filming reproduces "an alphabetical card index to the compiled service records of volunteer soldiers belonging to units from the state of Louisiana who served in the Florida War during the year 1836. The index contains most of the names of Louisiana soldiers to which references were found in the records used in compiling the service records. The cards give the name of the soldier, his rank, and the unit in which he served. There are cross-reference cards for soldiers' names that appeared in the records under more than one spelling.""
Perfect! Exactly what I needed! But as I flipped through the index cards, it became obvious that these were for volunteer soldiers from Louisiana who served in 1837 and 1838.
I also saw that there was an "Index to compiled service records of volunteer soldiers who served during the War of 1837-1838 in organizations from the state of Louisiana" which promised the following: "On this microfilm "is reproduced an alphabetical card index to the compiled service records of volunteer soldiers belonging to units from the state of Louisiana who served in Florida in a campaign referred to be these records as the War of 1837-38. The index contains most of the names of Louisiana soldiers to which references were found in the records used in compiling the service records. The cards give the name of the soldier, his rank, and the unit in which he served. There are cross-reference cards for soldiers' names that appeared in the records under more than one spelling.""
And, sure enough, this record set had the index cards of all the Louisiana Volunteers who served in the various companies under the command of Col. Smith in 1836. For whatever reason, the two record sets are each labeled as the other within familysearch.

The second location for the index is fold3.com. This index combines both of the indexes found on familysearch.org, so you might encounter names of volunteers from 1837-1838, who are not part of this specific record set. My collection only includes the Compiled Military Service Records (CMSR) for volunteers who served in 1836. This is the link to the US, Indian Wars Service Record Index, 1815-1858. When searching, filter the location to “Louisiana” to just look at the Louisiana Volunteers.