As I plug away at transcribing my 2nd great grandfather’s 137-document pension file, I keep thinking to myself how valuable it is that I’m doing this one small document at a time. When I started, the idea of transcribing this vast file seemed insurmountable. The printed sheaf of papers that I received from the National Archives is nearly an inch tall!
But rather than think about the enormity of transcribing the whole file, I’m just looking at the next document. Then the one after that. I’m trying to work on it at least 30 minutes daily (even after the succcessful end of my latest 30 x 30 challenge two weeks ago, I’ve only missed a couple of days) and slowly but surely I’m getting through it. Today, I transcribed documents 47 and 48. Before long, I’ll be halfway done.
Once or twice I’ve questioned the value of this exercise. But as soon as I do that, I discover something I didn’t notice on first reading, when I wasn’t transcribing. There’s no doubt in my mind that transcribing these pension documents is a valuable use of my time.
So here’s my big takeaway, which of course can be applied to many aspects of my life. When I’m facing a large, seemingly insurmountable project, I can get past overwhelm and eventually complete it if I:
- Break it down into small tasks
- Do one task at a time
- Work on it very regularly, for a small period of time
This strategy is working well on the pension file. I can’t wait to get all the way to the end and see what discoveries has in store for me!
A commenter asked for the steps on requesting a Civil War pension file. Here they are:
- Go to this page on the National Archives website.
- Select NATF 85D: Federal Military Pension Application – Civil War and Later Complete File
- Select delivery format (I selected paper)
- Click Add to Cart
- Login or register
- Fill out form with your ancestor’s name, military unit and other information (if you don’t have that, check out Ancestry.com or Fold3.com to get it)
- Pay $80 online
- Wait for your packet!
Janine as I recall you did the request for information on-line – can you recreate steps on how to do this?
Jerry, you’re talking about the pension file, right? I just added a PS in the post above with the steps.
I have a 150+ Mexican War pension file I am beginning to transcribe. I’m curious to know how you are organizing this. I’m assuming you are using Word or similar to transcribe. Do you attach the actual image to the transcription? Are you creating each page of the file as a separate document or are you creating one huge document? If separate, how are you titling and organizing them so you don’t lose the integrity of the original file (which may have been shuffled and rearranged in its history, but still…)?
Thanks. And yes, large pension files are daunting.
Hi, Karin. Some of the details of the process are on the post called Processing Civil War Pension Files, which I posted here on 2 Jun 2015. (You can search for it at the top of the blog.) But here are the answers to your questions. I transcribe in Pages (the Mac’s word-processing software). I did not preserve the integrity of the original paper file–I put it in chronological order when I received it (per the instructions of Julie Miller, mentioned in the June 2 post). I gave the whole file of documents one source number (the next number in my sources in my Reunion software). And then I numbered each individual document, starting with 1. I created labels for each document with the source number and citation. Then I scanned the whole thing. (The current one I’m working on has 236 pages.) It’s in a big pdf.
When I transcribe, I create a new Pages file for each document. I just transcribe from the pdf, which I like because I can easily make the type bigger if I’m having trouble reading handwriting. This is a sample file name I use for each document–they’re all the same except for the final number: Pension File-George Washington Adams-Transcription [282-48].
You can see a sample citation on the June 2 post. When I cite a fact from the pension file, I use the main source number and then in the Detail field I use the document number. I do not attach an image of the file because I chose to scan them into one large file. It might have been a smarter choice to have scanned them separately so I could do that, but it’s water under the bridge for me now. 🙂 I do find it handy to have all the pages in one pdf because I do frequently look back (or forward) at documents.
I hope that helps. Let me know if you have more questions.
Janine- Is NARA now providing the entire CW pension file? At one time they only sent 75 pages and they picked the pages.
Things must have changed. Now, for $80 they will send you the complete pension file, up to 100 pages. Beyond that there’s a per-page fee of 70 cents a page. In the case of the pension file I wrote about here, someone from the Archives called and told me that the file was more than 100 pages and I gave them a credit card number to charge for the reproduction of the other pages. I think I ended up getting the documents in two parts–the first 100 pages came before the rest.