On 6 April 1865, the New Jersey legislature passed an act "to secure statistics of orphanage resulting from deaths of soldiers and sailors of New Jersey during the present war" (NJ Laws of 1865, chapter 459). The act required that each municipal assessor file with the municipal clerk a list of boys and girls orphaned, or half-orphaned, by the death of a Civil War soldier or sailor as of the first of May each year. These returns were to be forwarded to the Secretary of State, who was required to copy the information into a book of orphanage statistics. For securing these statistics, the Secretary of State was to be paid twenty-five dollars by the State Treasurer, from which the municipal assessors and clerks would each receive five cents per orphan listed. While the law required municipalities to file a return with the state each year, only a few municipalities filed after 1865.

Content Note

Returns of orphanage record the following information: name, company and regiment, and date of death of father; name of mother; names and ages of orphaned children; and remarks as to the family's circumstances. This series includes both the original returns and the "Statistics of Orphanage" volume compiled by the Secretary of State from the 1865 returns. Additional orphanage returns have been found in birth and death sections of the vital statistics registers for the years 1865-1871, as follows:

Unless otherwise noted, the original returns listed on the following pages are dated 1865 and consist of one sheet.

Statistics of Orphange resulting
from the Civil War, 1865-1867

225 West State Street
P.O. Box 307
Trenton, NJ 08625-0307
609.292.6260 (general information)
609.633.8334 (administrative office)
609.292.9105 (fax)