Joseph Fulton Boyd was Chief Quartermaster in the Army of the Ohio during the Civil War. Papers relate mainly to Boyd's activities in the Army of the Ohio and the Quartermaster's Dept., operating in Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. Formats include routine correspondence, miscellaneous letters, general orders and circulars, strength reports, consolidated quartermaster reports (1861-1863), account books, forage records, invoice books, records books, and a lecture notebook. Subjects covered include supplies, transportation, civilian labor, and the Secret Service.
Collection contains Quartermaster Corps records of the Army of the Ohio, especially the 2nd division and the 23rd Corps. Included are records of supplies, containing lists of tools, food prices, and supplies captured from the Confederates; and monthly and quarterly reports, 1861-1863. Forage records consist of vouchers, receipts, requisitions, reports and monthly statements. Financial papers concern payments to military personnel. Records of transportation include receipts, requisitions, and vouchers for horses, wagons, services, and equipment; and reports, among them a list, dated 1864, of the number of men, officers, and horses in the Army of the Ohio. Steamship papers, dated 1865, record the transportation of men, horses, and equipment, as well as the condition of lighthouses. There are individual and consolidated reports on civilian labor. Other papers relate to the secret service, dated 1861-1865. Personnel papers contain battlefield orders, dated 1864-1865, orders for the Freedmen's Bureau, court-martial reports, and reports of the army, 1864-1865. Papers of the U.S. Military Railroad in North Carolina comprise reports on men and equipment carried, accidents and thefts, and property sales; and correspondence concerning friction between military and railroad officials, problems with the African American troops, and the shipment of cotton and resin. Reports on civilian purchases cover all supplies other than forage and horses. There are also extra duty reports; strength reports, chiefly those of the 11th Maine, 52nd Pennsylvania, 47th, 56th and 100th New York, and 104th Pennsylvania Volunteers; routine correspondence, primarily letters which accompanied reports; miscellaneous papers, generally concerned with African Americans, the conversion of schools into hospitals, and other concerns of the quartermaster; and general orders and circulars. Volumes include account books, dated 1861-1864; forage records, dated 1861-1862; military telegrams, dated 1864-1866; and an abstract and letter book, dated 1861-1869.