In the early 1870s, staff at the Department of State in Washington created an index card system to keep track of where posts were located and who was in charge of them. Likely created as part of preparation for printing an historically oriented special edition of the Register of the Department of State for the department’s centennial, the original creator looked at departmental records to fill in historical data back to the earliest days of US foreign relations. The cards were maintained until 1969, and they are available on microfilm through 1939. They are organized by post and then by rank of personnel. As an example, here’s the first card for US consuls posted to Vienna, Austria:
If one typed up a list of all the places in the card headings, wouldn’t that provide a comprehensive list of posts? Sadly, no. In checking the cards against other records, I’ve found several dozen additional posts, although most of what I’ve found are consular agencies, rather than salaried posts. (The government kept good track of salaried posts!) The authors of the cards didn’t handle place name changes consistently, either. In some cases, when a post’s name changed — from Saint Petersburg to Leningrad, for example — the list was continued on the original card and a “see also” card was inserted for the new name. In other cases, they created a card for the new name and started a new list there. Sometimes they created new cards for minor spelling differences, too. In sum, there’s a lot of overlap.
I haven’t delved deeply enough into the cards to comment on whether the personnel data is accurate, but it’s certainly an extremely good place to start.
Here’s the citation for the microfilmed version of the consular cards:
US Department of State, List of U.S. Consular Officers, 1789-1939, National Archives Microfilm Publications: Microcopy no. 587, 21 vols. (Washington DC: National Archives and Records Service, 1964). OCLC Accession number: 7908593.
There are also cards for the diplomatic posts. Here’s the first card for the legation in Vienna:
Here’s the citation for the microfilmed version of the diplomatic cards:
US Department of State, List of U.S. Diplomatic Officers, 1789-1939, National Archives Microfilm Publications: Microcopy no. 586, 3 vols. (Washington DC: National Archives and Records Service, 1964). OCLC Accession number: 397282.
I have had the consular and diplomatic cards digitized and am willing to consider requests to share.
For more on the history of the DOS card file, see Smith’s America’s Diplomats and Consuls.