The laboratory needed someone to procure and keep track of equipment and supplies, maintain cost and time records, and perform other essential clerical duties, and in February 1947 Burns employed Merwin N. Seybolt for this purpose. A willing worker ready to help with any task at hand, Seybolt used available equipment to print labels for park museums not covered by the initial allotment and installed the wiring for the laboratory's first electric map. When a better opportunity for clerical advancement opened in the departmental offices, the laboratory felt his loss.

All four of the museums scheduled for exhibits concerned battles, so someone versed in military history and artifacts was needed to research diorama details, draft labels, gather data, and check exhibit accuracy as well as locate and acquire specimens. Burns' first selection for this curatorial job, Maxson Holloway, made a promising start in April 1947 but resigned after a month to accept the directorship of the new Saginaw Art Museum. The position remained vacant until August, when Harold L. Peterson entered on duty. Peterson had recently earned a master's degree in history from the University of Wisconsin, where he had chosen his thesis subject in military material culture for a department that openly questioned the validity of objects as historical documents. The thesis formed the basis for his first book, Arms and Armor in Colonial America, published in 1956. It marked him at once as an authority.

Peterson had other curatorial qualifications resulting in part from his activities as a studious, discriminating private collector. His fine collection of early weapons and armor and books concerning them continued to grow after he entered Park Service employment. Allowing curators to engage in this practice entailed ethical hazards, but scrupulous integrity on his part avoided conflicts of interest. Assembling and maintaining his own collection schooled him in the skills of expert identification, developed his judgment in matters of quality and authenticity, made him familiar with market values and acquisition procedures, and led him to study and personally apply safe, effective conservation methods. Through his collection he kept in close contact with an expanding international circle of curators, collectors, and conservators who shared his interests and friendship. His later active role in such organizations as the Company of Military Historians, the International Association of Museums of Arms and Military History, and the Washington Conservation Guild added continually to his curatorial competence. At the outset he picked up the work Holloway had started on the Manassas exhibit plan.

During the start-up period, production could not wait until an approved plan detailed all the exhibits for any one of the four museums. Preparation work proceeded on exhibit units one at a time as the concerned parties reached agreement on what they wanted. By 1947 two of the parks involved had historians as superintendents, two had staff historians, and the Region One office in Richmond had an able regional historian. All had a lively interest in the exhibit plans. Staff members of the History Division returning to Washington from Chicago also had a stake in the historical accuracy and interpretive effectiveness of the exhibits. Superintendents and park historians traveled to Washington to discuss exhibit form and content, accompanied on occasion by the regional historian or by outside experts. Drafts, layouts, label copy, and memoranda filled with suggestions or rebuttals shuttled back and forth. On one occasion the entire Museum Branch staff spent a Saturday at Manassas going over layouts with the superintendent.

The involvement of so many individuals in the planning had obvious value, but at the expense of production efficiency. A heated debate developed between Manassas and the History Division over a detail in a diorama. The laboratory planned the diorama carefully to depict a critical point in the battle and at the same time to illustrate a well-known incident: Confederate General Bernard Bee stemming the retreat of his troops with the cry "There stands Jackson like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians." The painted background would reveal Jackson and his fresh regiments lining the crest of Henry House Hill. Work on the scene had to stop while the park insisted that Jackson's men had stood in line of battle and historians in Washington argued that they were then prone. Finally the laboratory effected a compromise by painting some companies standing and others prone.