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.)