Massive. How else do you describe a book with over 1,000 pages of Revolutionary War Pensions: Awarded By State Governments 1775-1874, The General And Federal Governments Prior To 1814, And By Private Acts Of Congress To 1905? Well, you could call it a brilliant reconstruction of lost records.
On the 8th of November 1800 a fire razed the War Department, destroying the young nation’s war pension records. Another fire on the 24th of August 1814, started during the British invasion on Washington as part of the War of 1812, destroyed both those files reconstructed after the first fire as well as all additional records added up to that time.
Despite the loss of these records, other records do exist. From these other resources, the author, Lloyd Bockstruck, painstakingly reconstructed a list of over 16,000 pensioner with an index of another 15,000 individuals mentioned in the text. Each entry contains the pensioner’s name, state of service, and place of residence. Available details of service may include dates and places of engagements and wounds received, date of death, and names and relationships of surviving family members, especially widows.
Key sources used in this marvelous reconstruction include the pension records generated by the governments of each of the original thirteen states (state governments had their own programs and in varying degrees preserved many of their pension files); and reports, created as the results of acts of Congress, for pensioners receiving pay for service or disability, or widows and orphans receiving benefits, mostly issued as government publications between 1792 and 1840.
Revolutionary War Pensions—Awarded by State Governments 1775–1874, the General and Federal Governments Prior to 1814, and by Private Acts of Congress to 1905; by Lloyd de Witt Bockstruck would make a fabulous collection to any genealogical, society, or personal library.
Order a copy of Revolutionary War Pensions for yourself or library, at Family Roots Publishing Item #GPC492.