Nominal Rolls

Thanks to an initiative by Graham Stewart (a member of the Great War Forum) we received a selection of Nominal Rolls of CEF units that he had purchased overseas.  Graham offered to share those with his associates at the CEF Study group, thus "kick starting" a project to collect and publish the available nominal rolls.

For those wishing to contribute to the project by scanning and uploading copies of their Nominal Rolls, the instructions have been posted to the CEFSG Forum.  There you will find a summary of how to complete these steps, along with a link to where the instructions are located.  Also there you will find a few variations in the "standard text" and "keywords" that we have all been using for the archive uploads.  These are the links that you need to know:

 

	CEFSG Forum Post - Instructions on how to use Archive.org
	CEFSG Matrix Directory - files you will need that are linked to the post

A number of members are now scanning their nominal rolls and uploading them to the Archive.org site, which we then record here on the table (see below) so that everyone is aware of what is available.  Some members are also assisting with the upload of the files to the Archive.org site for those that are not able to complete the process.  If none of these options are available, send your PDF version of the nominal roll to the Matrix and we will see to the upload as time permits. 

Until such time as one or more of our members prepares a concise and accurate description of a Nominal Roll:

Scope and content of Nominal Rolls:

Sub-series consists of hand-written, typed and printed lists of soldiers on strength with the unit on a particular date. They were generally created in the course of a unit's formation in Canada, often in preparation for departure overseas. Five copies of nominal rolls (army form MFW 20) were to be prepared by the regimental adjutant. Two were submitted to the headquarters of the Military District in which the unit was raised (one of which was to be forwarded to the Department of Militia and Defence in Ottawa). Three were to accompany the unit overseas.

The first page was to contain a list of officers, arranged in order of rank. Other ranks followed on succeeding pages, arranged in alphabetical order, showing full name, rank, and regimental number.

The following is a list of Nominal Rolls that have been published to start this project: (once the list gets larger we will sort them - that has now started but we may have to go to unit pages as the list grows).  The table shows the contributor of the Nominal Roll and if working as a team, the member who looked after the upload to the Internet Archive.

If the unit is listed but there is no hyperlink, that means that the Matrix has been told that the Nominal Roll is "in production" and will be uploaded in the near future.