If your ancestor--Irish or not--served in the Civil War, you may already know about Gopher Records, a service specializing in the retrieval of Civil War and other 19th-century military records from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), including service records, pensions, medical records, Court Martial records, Bounty Land records, and others. Their motto: "If you need records, we will gopher you."

Found at gopherrecords.com are a helpful blog and handy article entitled "How to Research Your Civil War Ancestor."  This week they released an announcement about a new, free website, BetterSoldiersAndSailors.com, which provides a dramatic improvement over the popular “Soldiers and Sailors” site offered by the National Park Service (NPS). 

The old NPS system has a weak search engine and it fails to address many limitations of the data itself. The new system "offers powerful tools (e.g., phonetic searches, wildcards, etc.) that are not otherwise available to search the same database that is used by the NPS Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System (CWSS). It also searches some databases that are not available in that system, including Civil War burials and Court Martial records. Once the soldier/sailor is found, it will provide online links and other advice about where you can find his records."

You can read more at Dick Eastman's blog.