Preliminary Inventory of the Records of United States Army Commands

Most of the entries in this inventory describe orderly books and company books. These were the two main books kept by each office or unit. An orderly book typically contains War Department General Orders; division, department, and district orders; and regimental and garrison orders (both received and issued). A company book may contain registers of commissioned officers, noncommissioned officers, men transferred out, men transferred in, deaths, desertions, men fined by court-martial, men discharged, men furloughed, men in captivity, descriptive lists of officers and enlisted men; clothing accounts; accounts of arms and ammunition; and accounts of camp equipage and stationary.
This inventory has been organized according to geographical command and units of the Army. The geographical command entries are divided into three periods: 1784-1813, March 1813-May 1815, and May 1815-May 1821. The entries for the units are arranged alphabetically by type of unit, and regiment number (if applicable). "Companies seldom issued orders and all companies copied all the orders they received into their orderly books, as did adjutants and inspectors. Consequently, if all companies of a regiment were at the same post, all company orderly books of that regiment generally duplicate each other. In the belief that the searcher would be aided by having theses orderly books grouped in series, even if incorrectly identified, an attempt has been made to assign these books to companies by name when a reasonable choice of name could be made."