FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

 

WHAT DO THE LETTERS AT THE BEGINNING OF A FILE NUMBER MEAN?

 

WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO SEARCH FOR A NAME OR EVENT?

To search for the name of a pension applicant or of an officer listed on a roster, go to the pension site revwarapps.org and use CTRL F.

 

To search for all occurrences of a name or event, click on the tab for SEARCHES near the top of the pension site and use one of the search engines. 

§  Note that many names of people, places, and battles were spelled in various ways. 

§  Finding a particular event is often done most easily by searching for the date. Use both of the formats in the following examples: June 20, 1779 and 20 Jun 1779.

 

WHY ISN’T MY ANCESTOR’S APPLICATION HERE?

Only a small proportion of Revolutionary War soldiers applied for pensions.

Judging from rosters (B69, and B81), only about one out of six soldiers applied for pensions. The reasons for not applying are several:

§  Continental soldiers were not eligible for pensions until 1818, and they had to be impoverished.

§  Other Continental soldiers, as well as militiamen, were generally not eligible for pensions until 1832, and only if they had served at least six months.

§  Many did not apply because they did not need the money or avoided the stigma of being a pensioner.

§  Some did not know pensions were available because they were illiterate and lived in remote areas.

 

With few exceptions we transcribe only the pension applications of soldiers who served from southern states or those from northern states who served in the South.

The goal of Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution is to correct the relative neglect of Revolutionary War history in the South.

§  So far we have transcribed all the pension applications of soldiers from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, as well as those who served in the South from Maryland or Delaware.

§  We are in the process of adding soldiers who served in the South from other northern states.

 

Some applications are under a different spelling of the name.

 

Soldier who did not apply for pensions for themselves often testified in support of others. Use the Search facility to search for soldiers in other pension applications and in rosters.

 

WHY DID THE PENSION OFFICE REJECT A CLAIM?

Reasons for the rejection of federal pension claims are often in the original file but not transcribed, or the reason for rejection may be found in Rejected or Suspended Applications for Revolutionary War Pensions (Washington, DC: 1852; abstracted by ancestry.com). In a random sample of 34 rejected federal claims, no explanation could be found for about 4%.

 

Just over half the rejected federal claims by soldiers were rejected for good cause.

§  The most common valid cause for rejecting a soldier’s claim was that he did not serve the minimum time required by the pension act (nine months for the act of 1818, six months for the act of 1832).

§  About 15% of the rejected soldiers’ claims were because the soldier claimed Continental service, but his name could not be found on a roster. In such cases the applicant had to obtain testimony from an officer or two eye-witnesses.

§  The main reason for rejecting widows’ claims was that proof of the date of marriage was deemed insufficient.

 

The Pension Office decided some rejected soldiers’ claims under the act of 1832 contrary to law and the Pension Office’s own regulations.

§  In some rejected claims the Pension Office made an obvious error.

§  Some rejected claims were because a militiaman’s name was not on a roster, even though militiamen were exempted from this requirement by the regulations of the Pension Office.

§  The Pension Office rejected or reduced many claims in the mistaken belief that militiamen never served tours longer than a few months each.

§  The Pension Office sometimes decided that being assigned to drive a wagon or to be an officer’s servant was not military duty.

§  The Pension Commissioner in 1834 decided that protecting the Virginia frontier against Indians was not military service. (For discussion see appendix to the pension application of David W. Sleeth S6111.)

                                                                                                                                                                                        

CAN PENSION APPLICATIONS BE TRUSTED?

It might appear that testimony about events that happened more than 40 years before would be unreliable, especially when money was involved. The following observations suggest recollections were relatively good.

§  The names of officers, battles, and places often agree with historical records and with the declarations of other soldiers living far away.

§  Soldiers frequently relived their experiences with each other and with family and friends after the war, so their recollections remained fresh.

 

The following observations suggest that fraud was rare.

§  It would have been difficult for a soldier to concoct a false narrative of service, especially if he was  illiterate, made his claim in court where he might be contradicted by a neighbor, and claimed to have been a Continental soldier whose name could be checked on a roster. The most egregious cases of fraud were by professional agents who concocted declarations of militia service and tricked illiterate men into putting their Xs on them before a Justice of the Peace. (See the discussion of the Lewis Speculating Gentry in the appendix to the pension application of David W. Sleeth S6111.)

§  In a random sample of 200 pension applications, only one appeared to be an outright fraud, with the applicant assuming the identity of a soldier who was recorded as having died while in service.

§  In 1834 and 1835 US District Attorney Washington G. Singleton made unannounced visits to 181 pensioners and took their declarations of service for comparisons with what was claimed months earlier in their pension applications. In 85% of those cases the account given to Singleton agreed with what was claimed in the pension application, which would be surprising if the service in the pension application had been fabricated. In most of the remaining 15% the difference was only in the duration of service. In only 8 of the 181 cases (4%) did the names of officers or the description of service disagree with what had been claimed in pension applications. If these results are typical, then the great majority of pension applications are reliable sources of information about soldiers’ services. (For details of Singleton’s investigation, see the appendix to the pension application of David W. Sleeth S6111.)