Veteran Corps of Artillery and Military Society of the War of 1812 records

The Veteran Corps of Artillery (more fully known as the Veterans Corps of Artillery, State of New York, or VCASNY) was formed in 1790 by veterans of the Continental Army after the Revolutionary War. It became an active militia and as such participated in the War of 1812. Subsequent to that war, a separate organization of veterans was formed, the Military Society of the War of 1812. The Corps and the Society (as the documents in the collection commonly refer to them) merged in 1848.

It appears that in 1848 and for some decades afterward neither organization was incorporated and their merger was more a practical one of administrative and membership convenience, as both organizations retained their identities and separate membership qualifications. In the 1890s, there appears to have begun an effort, credited to Asa Bird Gardiner, to revitalize the organization, and the fact that so much of the present collection originates in that timeframe can likely be attributed to that revitalization.

In 1892, the organization incorporated under the name Military Society of the War of 1812. Still, both the Corps and the Society retained separate identities, roles, and membership qualifications. Those separate identities have persisted down to the present, and may have intensified, as reflected in the separate websites of the Corps and the Society. The ambiguities are reflected in the collection as many documents, which date principally from the 1890s to about 1920, can include one or the other name, or both. A 2013 history of the organization, available at N-YHS, refers in its title to this relationship as "Veteran Corps of Artillery constituting the Military Society of the War of 1812."

(The above note was based largely on the content of the two organizations' websites: http://www.vcasny.org/ and https://www.militarysocietyofthewarof1812.com/.)