Wednesday, July 21, 2010

War of 1812 Final Payment Vouchers on Footnote.com

One of the databases recently updated on www.Footnote.com is the War of 1812 Final Payment Vouchers Index for Military Pensions, 1818-1864. There are 65,770 entries in this index, which is 95% complete. The database description says:

"Pension payment records are not typically found in pension application files. These cards were created as an index for the final payments made to either the veteran or his widow. They provide additional details on where a family may have moved in the early- to mid-19th century, death dates of veterans, widows, or dependent children, and sometimes the maiden name of a widow."

The page for this database looks like this:




I put "Seaver" in the search field and received 8 matches. One of them is for Obed Seaver of Rhode Island (not my ancestor, but a distant cousin!). His card is:



As you can see, it lists his date of death as 13 November 1843.

I looked for cards for my known War of 1812 soldier, Amos Underhill, and didn't find him. Oh well.

1 comment:

Julie said...

Hi Randy,

Thanks for sharing this resource. I'm not sure it is specific to the War of 1812, though. The card for my ARW soldier is part of this collection and I do not see anything on the database's home page strictly indicating the War of 1812.

Also, Ancestry has the actual ledgers in their U.S. Pensioners, 1812-1872 collection (http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=1116&enc=1), which has a lot more information than the index cards on Footnote.

Julie