Genealogy Tip: Your Ancestor’s Revolutionary War Pension (part 3)

Introduction: In this article – the third in a three-part series – Katie Rebecca Garner gives tips for researching your ancestor’s Revolutionary War pension. Katie specializes in U.S. research for family history, enjoys writing and researching, and is developing curricula for teaching children genealogy.

Previously in this series, we learned about the history of Revolutionary War pensions and what we can find in them (see links at the end of this article). We will conclude this series by learning where to research pensions, and exploring additional records of our case study of Jacob and Mary Long to see what other research can be done from pension records.

To search Revolutionary War records, you first need to know as much as you can about the ancestor’s life. The more you know of your ancestor, the more confidence you can have that you’re looking at records for the right person, especially if your ancestor had a common name, such as Jacob Long. This entails looking them and their relatives up in any record available for the place where they lived, especially old newspapers such as GenealogyBank’s Historical Newspaper Archives.

Photo credit: https://depositphotos.com/home.html

To determine if Revolutionary War pension research should be done on an ancestor, you’ll need clues that they served in the Revolutionary War or received a pension for service. Places to find clues include: the 1840 census, which listed Revolutionary War pensioners; pension abstracts; lineage society records such as Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) or Sons of the American Revolution (SAR); and grave abstracts. Also, search in published records, indexes to service records, and state level books.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) houses many records of the Revolutionary War. FamilySearch is one of multiple partners digitizing these records, and some can be found in the FamilySearch database. Since not everything is online and indexed, you may need to browse through some of the records. Unfortunately, fires in the War Department in 1800 and 1814 destroyed many of the earlier records.

Once you find and read your ancestor’s pension, you will have clues to much more research about the family. For example, a Jacob Long Jr. was mentioned in Jacob Long’s pension. When I searched GenealogyBank’s census collection for Jacob Long, multiple results appeared for Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and two often appeared in the city of Lancaster.

It was easy to differentiate the two Jacob Longs in Lancaster (city) because one was designated as Jacob Long Jr. It’s easy to assume that Jacob Long Jr. is the son of Jacob Long Sr.; however, when two people in the same town had the same name, they were often differentiated by “Sr.” and “Jr.,” whether or not they were related.

Census returns for both Jacob Longs would need to be compared to determine if Jacob Long Jr. had left the household of Jacob Long Sr. Probate records for Jacob Long Sr. would name relatives and indicate if Jacob Long Jr. was related to him.

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Based on the marriage and death dates given for Jacob Long in his pension, he was enumerated on every census from 1790 to 1840, and each census was found for him in GenealogyBank. The 1840 census listed him as a pensioner and stated his age as 82. (1) If this census had been found before his pension record, this would have been a clue to search pension records for him. Jacob Long and Mary (Grinler) Long had a large household with nine members in 1790 (2), increasing to thirteen members in 1810 (3), and decreasing to six members by 1840. (4)

The ages on these censuses line up with the known birth years for Jacob and Mary based on information from their pension record. Based on the ages of several of the household members, it is highly probable that Jacob and Mary had other relatives living with them. Such relatives are likely to be named in probate records of Jacob Long and other relatives. If Jacob Long Sr. was made legal guardian over any nieces or nephews, this would be reflected in court records.

Jacob Long’s household in 1790 had more members than would be expected of a couple who had been married five years. This alone would look like a possible blended family. However, the pension record mentions no prior marriages for either Jacob Long or Mary Grinler.

FamilySearch’s probate record collections for Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, are digitized but not indexed. This means searching for Jacob Long’s probate record would involve browsing through hundreds of digital images. Time did not permit me to do that in this research session. Probate records are typically organized by location and date, so having the date and place of Jacob Long’s death from his pension record will ease the browsing process.

No newspaper announcements were found for Jacob and Mary’s marriage, but the pension record gives me the information I need to search for a church record of their marriage.

When researching your ancestor’s pension, you want to know as much as you can about them and understand the pension laws that affected their availability. The pension records contain a lot of genealogically valuable information, which can lead to further research of your ancestors.

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Note on the header image: “Washington Crossing the Delaware” by Emanuel Leutze, 1851. Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Wikimedia Commons.

Related Article:

• Genealogy Tip: Your Ancestor’s Revolutionary War Pension (part 1)
• Genealogy Tip: Your Ancestor’s Revolutionary War Pension (part 2)

Resources:

• https://www.familysearch.org/rootstech/session/1-find-and-use-revolutionary-war-records
• https://www.familysearch.org/rootstech/session/2-finding-your-ancestor-in-pension-and-bounty-land-files
• https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/american-revolution-genealogy/?category=records&subcategory=military&subsubcategory=revolutionarywar&sortby=newest
• https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/revolutionary-war-series-4-of-5-records-created-by-the-revolutionary-war-after-the-war-pensions/?category=records&subcategory=military&subsubcategory=revolutionarywar
• Jacob Long pension file, pension no. 3434, U.S. Revolutionary War, NARA publication M804, record group 15, roll 1580; digital image, fold3 (https://fold3.com : accessed 8 November 2022), 37 pages.

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(1) U.S. 1840 census, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Lancaster city, pg. 33, ln. 15, Jacob Long household; digital image, GenealogyBank (accessed 14 February 2023), citing FamilySearch.
(2) U.S. 1790 census, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Lancaster city, pg. 18, ln. 3, Jacob Long household; digital image, GenealogyBank (accessed 14 February 2023), citing FamilySearch.
(3) U.S. 1810 census, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Lancaster city, pg. 2, ln. 60, Jacob Long household; digital image, GenealogyBank (accessed 14 February 2023), citing FamilySearch.
(4) U.S. 1840 census, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Lancaster city, pg. 33, ln. 15, Jacob Long household; digital image, GenealogyBank (accessed 14 February 2023), citing FamilySearch.