Each company history page on the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers’ website includes a link to that company’s browsable roster of members. The search box allows researchers to search for soldiers’ names or historical data about the regiment using a single word or phrase (website screenshot, © Laurie Snyder, 2025).

Whether you’re confident or merely have a hunch that one of your ancestors served with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War, one of the quickest ways to learn more about him is to use our website’s search and browse capabilities because we may have already done some of your research for you.

If you already know which unit of the 47th Pennsylvania your ancestor served in (field and staff officers, medical staff, regimental band, or a specific company — A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, or K), start by looking for your ancestor’s name on that unit’s roster on our main website: 47thpennsylvaniavolunteers.com.

At a minimum, you will likely find your ancestor’s name and rank, as well as the dates of his muster-in and end of service. You may also find that your ancestor’s name has an active link that, when clicked on, will either take you to a full bio that we’ve already researched and published for him on our website, or will take you to a memorial for him on Find A Grave that may give you more data about him such as his birth and death dates and locations, the name and location of the cemetery where he is buried and, hopefully, the names of your ancestor’s parents, siblings, spouse, and children.

If you aren’t sure which unit your ancestor served in, however, you might want to try looking for his name by using our textbox search tool. First, search for him by placing his name between quotation marks — surname first, followed by a comma, single space and his given name (example: “Jumper, Amos”), and click your return key. That should pull up a new page that lists the company roster entry for him, as well as a list of other rosters on our website where his name might also appear (battle casualties, immigrants and first generation Americans, post-war westward migration, etc.).

If that doesn’t work, try searching for his name by using spelling variants (example: “Reinhard, Allen” instead of “Reinhart, Allen”). Or adjust your phrase so that you’re searching with your ancestor’s given name first and are searching with and without middle initials (example: “Tilghman Good” or “Tilghman H. Good”).

If you still don’t find your ancestor, don’t despair. You simply have a research puzzle that is just waiting to be solved.

It may be that your ancestor is a 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantryman who isn’t yet listed on our rosters because we’re still searching for documentation that will confirm his membership with the regiment. (Or it may be that your ancestor served with an entirely different regiment altogether. The 47th Pennsylvania Militia, Emergency of 1863 has often been confused with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, for example.)

In our next article, we’ll explore the next steps you might want to take as you go about “Finding Your 47th Pennsylvanian.”