Most Union army soldiers or their widows or minor children later applied for a pension. In some cases, a dependent father or mother applied for a pension. The pension files are indexed by NARA microfilm publication T288, General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934 (544 rolls).
The pension file will often contain more information about what the soldier did during the war than the CMSR, and it may contain much medical information if he lived for a number of years afterward.
To obtain a widow's pension, the widow had to provide proof of marriage, such as a copy of the record kept by county officials, or by affidavit from the minister or some other person. Applications on behalf of the soldier's minor children had to supply both proof of the soldier's marriage and proof of the children's birth.
Union Army Pension, regular or volunteer.
If your looking for one to nine pensions for different veterans this is where you order. Each pension ordered includes all pensions (Invald, widow, dependent, Mother, Father ect), if all are written on the Pension Index Card.
Our pension package includes the first 350 images, then it is $0.15 per image thereafter. While the average pension package is 145 images we have had one pension that was 1,212 images in 7 envelopes. As we have no idea of the image count before we get the pension, we must be able to cover our costs. Keep in mind, we do every page that has handwriting or a stamp on it, every page.
We also include our free archivial service, we will freely store your images for at least the next five years. We currently have every record we have pulled for the last 20 years and will replace them for any reason for the first five years for free, after that the cost is $5,00 for the whole pension or record.
