Unfortunately, the histories of the formation of individual posts were not themselves so well preserved. In the town of Aurora, Illinois, in 1868, a Soldier' Monument Association was formed; but instead of a statue the Association decided that an Aurora G.A.R. hall would be built as both meeting place and monument. A Ladies Auxiliary Monument Association formed to help raise money. Very little is known about the Auxiliary, but it was evidently decided to offer a permanent written memorial in the records of the hall for each donation. To that end, special forms were printed, and donors recorded either their own story, or the story of a veteran who had died. These forms became the first collected memories of the hall which was finally built in 1877.

In the last decade of the eighteenth century as more and more veterans began to die, a formal effort began in the national G.A.R. organization to collect the memories of the remaining veterans. The collection of the Aurora G.A.R. Museum includes a calfskin-bound, gold-embossed volume entitled "Personal War Sketches, " a sort of personalized blank book, probably representative of books made available to all the G.A.R. posts. There appears to have been a process initiated to collect reminiscences. Members were issued forms printed with a number of questions which, when answered, were returned to the member's post. Once received back at the post, the answers were handwritten into the books with a greater or lesser degree of accuracy and skill. Very few of the questionnaires remain extant in the Aurora collection, but an example of the process from both form and book can be accessed here. The forms continued to be handed out to new members well into the 20th century, as dates in the Aurora book attest.