As seen in the Tuesday, January 2, 2001 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer :

Reveling in the reams: Paper trail to history

By Sandy Bauers
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

WEST NANTMEAL - People who fear that the world's paperwork is never-ending are probably right, and Bob Sullivan has some of the proof. He collects it. In the last 12 years or so, the Chester County man has amassed hundreds of printed forms from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Commissions, loyalty oaths, pay receipts, requisition forms, invoices, medical discharges, passes, mustering-in rolls and many more. To him, they are incontrovertible bits of history. "You cannot argue," he said, "with a printed form that is filled out." They pinpoint history for him.

Consider, for instance, an enlistment form for the Army of the United States of America, filled out on July 18, 1776 - a mere two weeks after the country was formed. The date is, to Sullivan, a riveting detail, suggestive of so much that was happening in those early weeks of the country. Somewhere amid the bustle, a printer was already turning out forms bearing the name of the new country.

Most of the forms he finds tell an unusual story or answer a question. A 1779 equipment list for the Pennsylvania Brigade catalogs dozens of supplies, including kettles, saddlebags, haversacks, hatchets and covered wagons. But what caught Sullivan's eye was something else. As a child fascinated by history, he'd always heard the soldiers slept six to a tent, and he wondered how anyone knew. There, on the Pennsylvania Brigade list, was an answer. The officer was ordering roughly six times as many canteens - one per man, presumably - as tents.

To Sullivan's way of thinking, the forms are mundane enough to reveal a truth about the everyday life of those who fought the wars. It doesn't matter much whether he obtains the original form or simply makes a photocopy. Originals can be expensive. What he wants is the information, the context. The thing about a filled-out form, he said, is that he knows it was used. If he collected, say, belt buckles, he'd never be able to prove that a given one didn't just sit in a warehouse for the duration of the war. "But when I pick up a form that's dated Aug. 10, 1863, I know it was used, who used it, where he was, and what he was doing that day."

Some say battles are won not on the field, but off it - at the meal tent, for instance. A well-nourished soldier fights better. Sullivan maintains, only partly facetiously, that paperwork can be a deciding factor. "You have to have everything in place before you start shooting," he said. "If you can't put shoes on the soldiers, they can't march. If you can't feed them, they have no stamina. If you can't shelter them in tents, they get sick." And "to obtain all those materials," he said, "you need to fill out forms."

Some forms reveal the mood of the populace. Sullivan has copies of officer's commissions from 11 of the 13 former colonies. Most use similar language about courage and loyalty, but the one from Rhode Island stands out. It orders the enlistee to "resist, expel, kill and destroy" the British. "They certainly made no bones about it," Sullivan said.

Others contain historical irony, such as the New Hampshire officer's commission for John Stark, who uttered what is now that state's motto, "Live free or die." When Sullivan picked it up - an act he describes almost reverently - he noticed the printer had used paper bearing the royal watermark of King George III.

Sullivan, who is 46 and provides computer technical support with the Roy F. Weston Co. in West Chester, got started on his odd quest after a casual conversation with friends who collected Civil War items. He asked if they ever came across forms from the Revolutionary War. They said that as far as they knew, none existed. He has since proved them very, very wrong. At the time, he worked for Unisys Corp., providing technical assistance for state governments that had bought company software. That took him to various state capitals, and he spent off-hours in state archives, historical societies and other repositories, leaving through boxes of papers and scrolling reels of microfilm.

The problem is organization. Literally tons of papers from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars are squirreled away in archives far and wide, but Sullivan found they are not filed according to, say, letters in one box, printed forms in another. He begins a search by asking for the papers of a prominent military figure.

Sullivan found dozens of forms from among the 10,000 reels of microfilm in the David Library of the American Revolution in Washington Crossing, Bucks County. The library's David Fowler said that of all the researchers he has met over the years, none has had Sullivan's preoccupation with forms. "It certainly is an interesting niche," he said.

To Susan Cooper, a spokeswoman for the National Archives and Records Administration, the forms "add another dimension to the history of an era. They add the local color, the texture and the nuance." The archives has thousands of cubic feet of documents from the period. Some are important - like the Emancipation Proclamation. Others are just the sort of commonplace things that Sullivan likes. All have value, Cooper said. "All those little moments in history are important because they add up to a big moment in history."

Sullivan views the world of documents as a huge puzzle. He knows what the big picture looks like "because you know what they had to keep track of," but he has no idea how many pieces there are.

How many types of documents existed? Sullivan has clues for the Civil War, when the military published books of instructions on how to fill out many of the forms. But the Revolutionary War, Sullivan said, is "uncharted territory." People often think Sullivan's hobby strange. "When I tell people, they sort of back away," he said. "People aren't interested in paperwork, especially in this day and age." But if they give him a chance to explain, they begin to see his point.

Lately, it has grown into a new venture. Sullivan has begun reproducing the forms on his computer. Like so many printers before him, he's not sure what it will lead to. "This is not threatening to take over as my normal job," he said. But he's found a market in reenactment groups, Colonial Williamsburg, Gettysburg National Military Park, and similar places.

At the very least, he's found he can make enough to fund more forays into the world of documents.

Sandy Bauers' e-mail address is sbauers@phillynews.com

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