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There is no better place to start researching the wartime experiences and postwar lives of your Civil War ancestors than the pension files held at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, D.C. “Life is like a box of chocolates,” explained Forrest Gump. “You never know what you’re going to get.” Opening a Federal Civil War pension file is like unlocking a treasure chest that, in most cases, has been untouched for more than 150 years. J. L. D. (Laurie) Woodruff’s Researching Your Civil War Ancestor: A Guide to Understanding Civil War Pension Files and Legislation is a step-by-step guide to finding and unlocking this priceless information.
These pension files are essential for understanding your family history or the lived experiences of individual soldiers during and after the war. They reveal detailed information about the soldier, his wife, and his children: What happened to him during the war? How did it affect his health and life afterward? When and where was he born, and when did he die? What were his children’s names and dates of birth? When and where did the soldier and his wife marry? Where did they live? What did he do for a living?
Once you begin exploring these files and notice how dramatically their contents vary from one veteran to the next, new questions emerge. Why was this Surgeon’s Report required? Why did this veteran have to list his children and wife in a bureau questionnaire? Why did the bureau reject this request for a pension increase, or approve that one and raise the monthly payment from $8 to $12? Why did a notary public submit an affidavit describing family records from a Bible? Answering these questions and dozens of others require a solid grasp of the federal legislation that shaped the Civil War pension system from 1861 to 1958. This book provides all that and more.
Researching Your Civil War Ancestor begins with a concise history of the pension system and a description—with examples—of the documents typically found in these files. Next, it explains how to locate your ancestor’s pension files and obtain copies of their complete contents through various methods. Finally, it guides readers on accessing and interpreting Civil War pension legislation. Every public act passed by Congress from 1861 to 1958 that addressed Civil War pensions is summarized, with links provided to the original texts online. The key to unlocking your Civil War ancestor’s history is waiting inside this book.
With a BA in Politics and Economics from Oxford University, Laurie Woodruff retired from a career in public accounting in Canada and spent six months at Virginia Tech working with Professors James A. (Bud) Robertson and William C. (Jack) Davis. With their guidance, he designed, implemented, and currently manages the Essential Civil War Curriculum (www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com). Now a project of the Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech, the Essential Civil War Curriculum website contains a definitive list of more than 300 topics that every student of the Civil War should study, produced by today’s foremost Civil War historians. Laurie is a member of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War and has researched more than 125 of his family members who served in the Civil War. After reviewing so many of their pension files, he decided it was necessary to understand the pension system that produced them.
