Archiving Regiments: Thomas M. Owen and the Collection of Alabama's Confederate Records

There is a light-gray photocopy of a typed letter tucked into a manila folder in a collection at the Alabama Department of Archives and History (ADAH) in Montgomery, Alabama. It is from the office of the director, and is addressed to a Mr. Edmundson. Within a few lines, it becomes clear that Edmundson is an American Civil War veteran, a former Confederate Army officer, and that the director wants a few things from him.

First, he needs to know when Edmundson's military unit, originally Company C of the Forty-fifth Alabama Infantry Regiment, became Company D. Second, he wants Edmundson to name living descendants of two other officers; and while he is at it, could Edmundson please confirm the first initial of another officer's name—is it C or J? Edmundson should also send papers, "any old documents, such as letters, reports, rosters, or commissions," that deal with his military service. "The value of [this kind of] contemporary data cannot be overestimated," the director tells Edmundson, and he will take good care of it. He eagerly awaits Edmundson's reply, for time is of the essence, and the director needs all the help he can get: "[Alabama] is doing all it can to preserve the materials for its history, and to clear up all obscurities before all of the actors themselves have passed away. What we do will be well or poorly done, in proportion as we have cooperation."¹

The letter to Edmundson was neither the first nor the last of its kind that Thomas M. Owen wrote over the nineteen years that he managed Alabama's fledgling state archives. That Owen was seeking information from the Civil War era was, on the one hand, unimportant; what he sought was historical information, period. Described as a man of "undiscriminating" tastes in old records, when it came to archival accessions Owen seemed to want it all. His initial funding proposal to the Alabama legislature envisioned that the state archives would have a broad mandate for "the collection of historical facts, records, and antiquities." The archives' first press release in the Montgomery Daily Advertiser announced Owen's desire to secure "copies of all books and pamphlets . . . relating to the State, as well as general historical works . . . maps, prints, charts . . . historical pictures, photographs and old oil paintings . . . school and college catalogues, all church literature" and "files of newspapers." Within Owen's personal library, state and national government records, periodicals, and publications of educational and religious institutions bulked largest. Personally and professionally, the director did not privilege any subject or era over another.²

From this standpoint, Owen's preservation of Civil War-era records was a topical sub-point of a larger goal. However, Owen insisted that his efforts "to gather authentic data, statistics, documents, reports, plans, maps, and other material for an impartial history of the Confederate side" of the war were not merely incidental; rather, they ranked as his "second duty" overall. Even a cursory perusal of his voluminous correspondence, official and unofficial, suggests that Owen probably did more work in gathering wartime records than in those of any other topic or time period. While Owen's role in establishing America's first state-supported archival repository is relatively well known, his documentation of Alabama's Confederate soldiers has received less specific attention. ³

Born the year after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, son of a Confederate veteran, Thomas McAdory Owen studied law at the University of Alabama, hung out his shingle in Bessemer, served as justice of the peace and county solicitor, and became involved in local politics. Always interested in history, Owen spent his spare time rummaging through the Library of Congress while clerking briefly at a Washington, D.C., post office. After returning to his law practice in Alabama, Owen helped found the Southern History Association in 1896 and reactivated the Alabama Historical Society in 1898.⁴

Still loftier ambitions motivated Owen. Since preparing an Alabama bibliography in 1897, he had become concerned about archival preservation. On one occasion, Owen...