Missouri's Union Provost Marshal Papers, 1861-1866, Indexed Online

So what did a provost marshal do during the Civil War? According to the State of Missouri's Web site, "These provost marshals were assigned regardless of the level of active warfare within a state or district. In districts with active fighting, the provost marshal's primary duty was to limit marauding against citizens, prevent stragglers on long marches, and generally suppress gambling or other vices not conducive to good order and discipline.... The provost marshal had the power to administer and enforce the law when it came to regulating public places; conduct searches, seizures, and arrests; issue passes to citizens for movement in and out of Union lines; and record and investigate citizen complaints."

Missouri has indexed thousands of pages of the provost marshal papers who dealt with citizens during the civil war. The papers themselves are not online, but the index is searchable at http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/provost/Default.asp .

There are several different ways you can search. You can browse the index by county, search by keyword, or search by name. A search for the keyword "fire" found nine results. They were presented in a table that included the involved person's name, county, city, subject (a brief description of the problem/activity), the date of the paper, and the microfilm reel number (the main page of the site provides contact information about getting the records on microfilm.)

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