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How I processed my Civil War pension files

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I’m fortunate to have three ancestors who fought on the Union side in the Civil War and for whom I was able to obtain pension files from the National Archives. Ten years ago, I wrote a post about how I processed those files, starting with creating a robust source citation. I got good feedback on the post, so I thought I’d resurrect it in case newer readers would find it helpful. The pension files truly are treasure troves of information and the painstaking time I spent going through them paid off. If you want to request your ancestor’s pension file, you can do so on this page of the NARA website.

Processing civil war pension filesAs I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I received my 3d great grandfather’s Civil War pension files from the National Archives in record time. I’d been prepared to wait 45 to 120 days and it arrived the week after I submitted the request online.

I dug right in and started processing the information. I was so grateful that I had attended the class Anatomy of a Military Pension, presented by Certified Genealogist Julie Miller at the National Genealogical Society’s annual conference that month. She provided step-by-step instructions of what to do with a military pension.

So the day after I received that 65-page pension file, I did what Julie suggested. I put the documents in chronological order and I assigned a number to each. Then I figured out a citation for the overall file and a  citation for each of the numbered documents.

Coming up with a proper citation was a bit of a challenge and I emailed Julie, who was kind enough to share the citation she uses for these files. (She had given us that info in the talk, but I hadn’t written it down.)

Here’s the citation I’m using for the overall pension file for my ggggrandfather, Richard Anderson Jeffries:

[278] Jeffries, Richard Anderson (1st Sgt., Company D, 13th Regiment, Missouri Volunteer Infantry, Civil War), application no. 567612, certificate no. 529585, Case Files of Approved Pension Applications, 1861-1934; Civil War and Later Pension Files; Department of Veteran Affairs, Record Group 15; National Archives, Washington, D.C.

278 was the next number in my source list in Reunion, my family tree software. Each of the individual documents is numbered, starting with 1, and has its own citation. My intention is that when I enter a fact into Reunion, I’ll use Source 278, but I’ll include in the detail field which of the 26 individual documents that particular fact came from.

I created citation labels for each of the documents and affixed them to the appropriate pages. (That’s the citation for document 16 above.) Then I scanned the whole document into a pdf. I elected to have one pdf, rather than 26 individual ones–time will tell whether that was a good choice. (Edited to add a year later: Yes! That was a great choice.)

The next step, according to Julie is to transcribe the documents. Yes, I’m going to type word for word exactly what is on the documents. Julie urged us not to skip that step because when we transcribe, we learn things we would not otherwise learn.

After I transcribe, I will abstract the documents, so I can tell at a glance what they are and what info is contained within each. And then I’ll enter the new-found facts into Reunion, my family-tree software.

That’s a lot of work, but I’m delighted to have learned how to be thorough with it. And I know I’ll learn so much about my ancestor.

I am so grateful to have this structure, because just a few days after receiving Richard Anderson Jeffries’s file, I received the pension file for my gggrandfather, George Washington Adams. That file is over 100 pages; I had to request and pay for the rest of the file (another 80 pages) to be copied–I’m still waiting for part two. That same week I received the third and final pension file, for another gggrandfather, Benjamin Franklin Igleheart. All three pension files, probably 250 pages, came within two weeks of my request.

If I did not have the structure Julie provided in that talk to thoroughly process the information, I know I would feel overwhelmed. I would probably skim the documents, pluck out a few easy-to-find facts, and put them away intending to get to them later. And I don’t know when later would be.

I have skimmed the most recently received pension files to get a preview what I’m going to learn. (G.W. Adams had a big dispute about the amount of his pension–an adversary in the Soldier’s Home turned him in for saying he was more disabled than he was!) But I’m not going to analyze them until I’m finished with Richard Anderson Jeffries. So that will be motivation to go through the process.

I think these pension files are going to be a great learning experience not just about my ancestors, but also about doing proper genealogical research. This feels great!

Putting my imperfectionism to work

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As I wrote in a post last week, I’ve been working on processing my 2nd great grandfather’s Civil War pension file. I got the tedious up-front source citation work completed, which involved creating source citations and labels for each of the 53 documents, affixing the labels to the paper documents and scanning the whole thing into a long pdf. I’m now working on transcribing the documents, one per day. (This is how I choose to process this type of document–I’m not saying it’s the only way or the best way, but it works for me.)

So today, I was working on Document Six and I realized that I have a typographical error in my source citation. The correct application number is 1007144 but I had typed 1006144 and copied it onto all my labels without realizing my error. That numbers appears 54 times (one for each document, plus an overall citation). Of course, it’s easy to fix in my software. But then I was faced with the pension document itself having the wrong application number on every document.

I considered my options:

  1. Fix all the labels, print them out again, affix the corrected label over the incorrect label on each document, and rescan the whole thing.
  2. Hand correct each label and rescan the whole thing.
  3. Add a notation to each label in the pdf itself
  4. Add a notation at the beginning of the pdf only

It felt like the “right’ thing to do would be option number 1. But what a pain in the butt that would be. I was okay with doing it once. But doing it a second time felt practically unbearable. Plus my printer is about to run out of toner.

I thought about what was important to me and realized that the most important citation was the one in my Reunion software (the one that I corrected in about 5 seconds). But I didn’t want my pension file pdf to be wrong, in case I pass it along to someone else.

So I added a notation in the pdf, 54 times, that says “correct application no. 1007144.” (That’s a picture of it above.) And you know what? That’s going to be good enough. It didn’t feel good enough to just do it at the top of the file. I want each citation label corrected in case someone is looking at only one document.

It took me less than 10 minutes to make this electronic correction (thanks to the miracle of copying and pasting), substantially less time than option number 1 would have taken. Bonus: I didn’t use up toner or risk the frustration of jammed documents in my scanner. Luckily, this is not a situation I will encounter with any kind of frequency, since I so rarely deal with paper documents.

I try to take these little lessons about “good enough” to heart and pass them along when I can. When does good enough speak to you in your genealogy research?

ETA: In the comments to this post, Kay asked for an example of a placement of the label. As I mentioned in the reply, I usually put it wherever it fits (or on the back of the page). Here’s a full-page view of the label placement.

Free access to Fold3’s Civil War records through April 15

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Free access to Fold3's Civil War collectionTo commemorate the start of the Civil War in 1861, Fold3 is making its Civil War collection available at no cost until April 15. The Civil War collection has 50 titles and 91 million records. Click here to learn more about it and get started.

Included in the collection are both Union and Confederate records. Titles available at no cost until the 15th include:

  • Civil War “Widow’s Pension” Files
  • Civil War Pensions Index
  • Confederate Service Records
  • Confederate Amnesty Papers
  • Southern Claims Commissions

As Fold3 points out in in its blog post about the free access, even if you can’t find your own ancestor at Fold3 you can use the collection to learn more about what his service might have been like.

If you don’t already subscribe to Fold3 and you have Civil War ancestors, this is a great opportunity to check out their plentiful holdings!

Getting past overwhelm by breaking a project down

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getting past overwhelm by breaking down a projectAs 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:

  1. Go to this page on the National Archives website.
  2. Select NATF 85D: Federal Military Pension Application – Civil War and Later Complete File
  3. Select delivery format (I selected paper)
  4. Click Add to Cart
  5. Login or register
  6. 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)
  7. Pay $80 online
  8. Wait for your packet!