United States. Army. Quartermaster Corps

Fort Arbuckle was built in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma on April 19, 1851 and was formally designated a fort in June 1851. It was established by the U.S. Army to protect the region's relocated Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes from raids by Kiowa and Comanche Indians. The fort was also visited by wagon trains of Mormons and other emigrants enroute to the California gold fields. On June 24, 1870, Fort Arbuckle was abandoned when the establishment of Fort Sill rendered its further maintenance as a military post unnecessary.

Many of the account sheets and lists were written by Capt. John W. McClure, Assistant Quartermaster, U. S. Army at New Orleans, La. There is frequent mention of other southern Louisiana places, such as Baton Rouge, Bonnet Carre Station, Carrollton, and Camp Parapet.

Invoices related to materials used in the construction of one of the early forts on the Gila River.

The steamship Santa Marta carried food provisions from Indianola, Texas to Port Lavaca, Texas from September to November 1865 and served as a transport ship in Galveston from November to December, 1865 before sailing to New Orleans in 1866.

The U.S. Army maintained a number of forts in the Southwest during the nineteenth-century. Critical to the survival of these outposts was the regular supply of provisions both for the troops and their livestock. Contracts for such supplies were arranged by a U.S. Army quartermaster in each particular district. Signed contracts between the quartermaster and local businesses were sent to U.S. War Department offices in Washington, D.C.

The Quartermaster Agency at Holbrook, Arizona was an intermediary station for the transmittal of supplies, equipment, and correspondence in the Southwest. The agency communicated with other senior Quartermaster agencies but especially with the Chief Quartermaster for the District of Colorado. In turn, the Holbrook facility transmitted equipment and requests to and from post quartermasters within the Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado areas.

The Quartermaster's Dept. of the Army during the Civil War was charged with provisioning, and laying the groundwork for troop transport. The department arranged land and water transport, provided horses and their feed, tents and camp equipment, lumber, tools, food, and clothing. They also built hospitals, barracks, and roads, and beginning in 1862, collected fallen soldiers and arranged for burial. The department served as both a supply warehouse and a corps of engineers during the Civil War.

Louisville, Kentucky was a center for Union supplies and training during the Civil War, with many supplies going through Louisville to points West and South by rail or river. The Louisville & Nashville (L&N) railroad was a major conduit for supplies and was guarded heavily, in part by the 110th USCT on the Nashville end, to which Edgar McLean (see below) was attached. Supplies sent to Nashville from Louisville made "Sherman's March" possible, as well as the delivery of provisions to many remote areas in various Southern theatres.

Edgar McLean was a Kane, Illinois farmer who joined the 122nd Illinois Infantry (Union) as a teamster. He became a private in his local regiment, and was then promoted to 2nd lieutenant in the 2nd Alabama Colored Infantry, later renamed the 110th USCT, in December 1863. The 110th guarded railroads and garrisons in Tennessee and Alabama and was mustered out February 6, 1866. According to the records in this collection, McLean served in the Pioneer Corps (4th division, 15th Army Corps), a corps of engineers whose members were pulled from various regiments. It was in this capacity that he served as an AAQM (Acting Assistant Quarter Master) in Louisville, Kentucky, while the rest of the 110th seems, by all accounts, to have remained in Tennessee. He left military service as a 1st lieutenant, and after the war, McLean moved back to his hometown where he married and continued farming. He died in 1920.

Benjamin R. Howell is listed on many of the records in this collection as the AAQM who transferred goods to McLean. Howell was from Oxford, Ohio. While a student at Miami University, Howell decided to join the 81st regiment of the Ohio Infantry, which saw action in Tennessee, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Georgia before ending the war in Louisville, Kentucky in June of 1865 and mustering out in July of the same year. After the war, Howell lived in Cincinnati and Michigan, and later became involved in the manufacturing business in Chicago. He never married, and came back to live with his sisters in Dayton, Ohio, where he died in 1907.