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From: Patti Hobbs <>
Subject: [TGF] Pension Files
Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2009 22:20:36 -0500


This may be a dumb question, but I'm confused by the addition of the widows'
pensions on Footnote.com. In the summer issue of NGS Newsmagazine, Claire
Prechtel-Kluskens says that the solider's application and pension, and the
widow's application and pension all refer to the same file but are called by
different names which refer to the current status of the file. So I don't
understand the new series at Footnote for Civil War widows' pensions. Are
they for widows whose husbands never filed for a pension themselves and thus
can be designated solely as "Widows' Pensions"? In looking at _Guide to
Genealogical Research at the National Archives_ I see that widows' pensions
were microfilmed and comprise publication M1279. It just seems like there
wouldn't be a separate set of widows' pensions outside of the the pension
file for the soldiers except, as I said before, the soldier did not qualify
for a pension himself, either because he was killed in action or died before
he applied for a pension.

I may understand all this much better after I go to NIGR this summer, but
I'm doing a program on pensions for our genealogical society and don't want
to steer anyone in a wrong direction.

Patti

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