Beginning in 1903, the U.S. War Department began the compilation of service records of men in the Confederate Army. The information for these service records was taken from records of the Confederate Government (company muster rolls, hospital registers, etc.) that were captured at the end of the war and taken to Washington, D.C., and from certain U.S. Army records that gave information about these Confederate soldiers such as prisoner of war registers, etc. A few years after the program was begun, the Georgia Commissioner of Pensions began writing to the U.S. War Department requesting abstracts of these service records. This was done in order to prove the service of the applicants for a pension. They usually give a brief summary of the man's service.