Michigan Volunteers in the Spanish-American War: Regiments and Records

Which Michigan regiments served in the Spanish-American War?

Michigan sent five volunteer infantry regiments and a naval unit to the war with Spain in 1898: the 31st, 32nd, 33rd, 34th, and 35th Michigan Volunteer Infantry, plus the Michigan Naval Brigade. The numbering wasn’t random — the state picked up where its Civil War infantry left off, so the first 1898 regiment became the 31st rather than starting back at 1. (If you’re also tracing a Michigan Civil War soldier, our Michigan Civil War records guide covers that earlier numbering system.) Every 1898 regiment formed at Island Lake, a training camp near what’s now Brighton in Livingston County, and every one grew out of the existing Michigan National Guard. When Governor Hazen Pingree tried to hand the Guard over to federal service as intact units, Washington said no — federal law required individual enlistment, so each guardsman had to sign up again as a volunteer, even though most stayed with the same company and the same neighbors they’d trained with for years.

I’ve spent time with the muster records for two of these regiments, and what strikes you first is how fast this all happened. President McKinley’s first call for 125,000 volunteers went out April 23, 1898. By mid-May, Michigan already had four regiments mustered and on trains east.

Only the 33rd and 34th ever left the country. The other three trained stateside and were mustered out without seeing Cuba, Puerto Rico, or the Philippines — which, if your ancestor served in the 31st, 32nd, or 35th, changes what kind of record you should expect to find.

Where were Michigan’s regiments sent?

The 33rd and 34th sailed for Cuba in late June 1898, assigned to General Duffield’s brigade within General Shafter’s Fifth Army Corps. They didn’t take part in the headline battle. On July 1-2, while the main army fought its way up San Juan Heights, the two Michigan regiments were held back for a diversionary attack at Aguadores, meant to pull Spanish attention away from the real assault. Three men of the 33rd were killed or died of wounds in that engagement — a small combat toll next to what came next.

Camp conditions did the real damage. Yellow fever broke out at Siboney within days of landing, and it followed the men to the evacuation camp at Montauk Point, Long Island, and even onto the transports home. By the time the 33rd mustered out that fall, roughly 50 of its men had died of the disease. The 34th fared worse: its own muster-out record lists 79 enlisted men and one officer dead of disease, one man drowned, and the regiment’s total recorded deaths climbing toward 88 — a number roughly nine times its combat wound count. The 31st and 32nd trained at Chickamauga and Tampa and never deployed overseas at all; the 35th, organized under the second call in September, stayed at Camp Meade and Augusta, Georgia, the entire war and still buried 23 men before it disbanded in March 1899.

Why did more Michigan soldiers die from disease than in battle?

Because the war’s real casualty was sanitation, not gunfire. Nationally, of roughly 280,564 Army, Navy, and Marine personnel who served, about 2,061 died — and fewer than 400 of those deaths came from combat. Typhoid fever alone infected over 20,000 recruits in the hastily built stateside training camps and killed close to 1,590 of them, accounting for the large majority of all camp deaths that summer. Michigan’s volunteers, packed into raw camps with green officers and improvised latrines, were no exception. A War Department inspection of the 34th’s own camp near Santiago cited poor placement of latrines and kitchens as a likely factor in its death toll — an uncomfortable detail the regiment’s own report doesn’t dwell on, but one that shows up in the official correspondence.

If you’re chasing a soldier who “died in the war” but left no wound record, disease is very often the answer. It’s worth checking hospital and burial correspondence before assuming a combat death.

What Spanish-American War records exist for Michigan soldiers?

Several distinct record sets survive, held by different institutions:

• Adjutant General’s Office records. Muster rolls, descriptive and assignment cards, officer affidavits, and reports of death or discharge for all five Michigan regiments are held as part of the Michigan Military Establishment collection at the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
• Compiled Military Service Records (CMSRs). The National Archives holds individual service jackets for volunteer soldiers, built from muster and pay rolls. They’re indexed by state in NARA’s General Index to Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Soldiers Who Served During the War with Spain, and copies can be ordered through NARA’s online request system.
• Pension application files. Filed separately from service records, these often contain far more personal detail — age, residence, family members, and post-war disability claims — and are also held by the National Archives.
• “Michigan Volunteers of ’98.” The state’s official 1898 souvenir publication, a complete photographic record of Michigan’s part in the war, published in Detroit by G. F. Sterling & Co. It’s held in research libraries and reprint editions circulate today.
• Adjutant General biennial reports. Michigan’s Adjutant General published regular reports to the legislature that summarize regimental strength, movements, and casualties — useful for confirming dates against the muster rolls.
• Digitized indexes. Ancestry.com and Fold3 both carry the National Archives’ Spanish-American War service record index, searchable by name, and FamilySearch holds a parallel index and card catalog entry for Michigan military records generally. None of these sites host full Michigan muster rolls, only the federal index cards that point you to the originals.

A fair number of these same men didn’t stop soldiering in 1899. Some Michigan volunteers who stayed in federal service, or reenlisted, went on to the Philippine Insurrection that followed — worth checking if your veteran’s family history mentions the Philippines rather than Cuba.

How do I find a Michigan Spanish-American War veteran’s service record?

1. Confirm the regiment. Family letters, a hometown newspaper notice, or a GAR-era obituary usually name the unit — critical, since the 31st/32nd/35th never left the U.S. while the 33rd/34th went to Cuba.
2. Check NARA’s compiled service record index for the soldier’s name under Michigan. This confirms enlistment dates, company, and basic service dates.
3. Order the CMSR itself through NARA if you need the full jacket — muster-in and muster-out dates, age and residence at enlistment, any hospitalizations noted, and discharge type. Each card in the file was drawn from the original regimental roster list, so names are only as accurate as the clerk who copied them in 1898.
4. Look for a pension file if the soldier or his widow later applied for benefits; these tend to hold richer genealogical detail than the service record.
5. Cross-check the Adjutant General’s Office materials at the Bentley Historical Library for company-level rosters and correspondence not captured in the federal index.

In my experience, step 4 is the one people skip, and it’s usually the most rewarding step of the five.

A historical marker near Brighton, at the old Island Lake training ground, still names all five regiments — worth a visit if you want to stand where the story started before you go chasing paper. It won’t hand you personal information about a specific soldier, but it puts the location and the unit history in context, which helps when you’re piecing together where a family’s fight actually took the troops it sent.

Frequently asked questions

What Michigan regiments served in the Spanish-American War? Michigan organized five volunteer infantry regiments in 1898 — the 31st, 32nd, 33rd, 34th, and 35th Michigan Volunteer Infantry — plus a Naval Brigade unit. All were mobilized at Island Lake, near present-day Brighton in Livingston County.

Did Michigan troops fight at San Juan Hill? Not directly. The 33rd and 34th Michigan reached Cuba and were assigned to General Duffield’s brigade under General Shafter, but they were held in a diversionary attack at Aguadores rather than the main assault on San Juan Heights on July 1-2, 1898.

How many Michigan soldiers died in the Spanish-American War? Disease was the real killer. The 34th Michigan alone recorded roughly 88 deaths, most from yellow fever contracted near Santiago or at the Long Island hospitals afterward, against a handful of combat wounds. The 33rd lost about 50 men to yellow fever at Siboney, Montauk Point, or aboard the transports home.

Where can I find a Michigan Spanish-American War muster roll? Muster rolls and related Adjutant General’s Office records are held at the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, as part of the Michigan Military Establishment collection. Compiled Military Service Records for the same soldiers are held separately by the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Was the 35th Michigan sent overseas? No. The 35th organized under the war’s second call for volunteers, trained at Camp Meade, Pennsylvania, and never left the United States. It still lost 23 men to disease before being disbanded at Augusta, Georgia, in March 1899.