{"id":2013,"date":"2016-02-03T05:00:42","date_gmt":"2016-02-03T05:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=2013"},"modified":"2016-02-03T05:31:24","modified_gmt":"2016-02-03T05:31:24","slug":"striking-out-on-civil-war-pensions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=2013","title":{"rendered":"Striking Out on Civil War Pensions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve requested three Civil War pensions from my researcher contact at the National Archives and he tells me that they are not at the National Archives. Based on suggestions from him and another genealogist, I&#8217;ve decided try contacting the Federal Personnel Records Center in St. Louis for copies of these records to make certain they are not there before I contact the Veterans&#8217; Administration and make a Freedom of Information Act request.<\/p>\n<p>Why are the files not in the National Archives? That&#8217;s because not all Civil War pension files are in the National Archives. The vast majority are and that is the place to initially make your request for Civil War pension materials.<\/p>\n<p>The three files I requested were for:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Alfred Butler, 9th Regiment, Company I, Michigan Cavalry<\/li>\n<li>Charles Kirkham, 61st Illinois Infantry, Company I<\/li>\n<li>William Ehmen, 43rd Illinois Infantry, Company C<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Why aren&#8217;t these men&#8217;s pensions at the National Archives? The reason is pretty simple (or at least I think so): their wives.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Alfred Butler&#8217;s wife, Sarah, died in 1952<\/li>\n<li>Charles Kirkham&#8217; s wife, Reka, died in 1960<\/li>\n<li>William Ehmen&#8217;s wife, Tjede, died in 1942<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While I&#8217;m not certain of the exact cutoff to be in the National Archives, I&#8217;m reasonably certain that Kirkham&#8217;s pension is not at the Archives because the widow who was getting pension benefits died in 1960. The relatively recently deaths of the other two may be the reason as well.\u00a0 I just know that the pensions I have received from the National Archives have been ones where the widows died well before 1942. This experience is anecdotal and your experience may vary slightly.<\/p>\n<p>We will have a status update when there&#8217;s something to report.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a reason behind getting each pension as this is not an academic exercise.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Alfred Butler is a son of my ggg-grandfather Benjamin Butler (about 1819 New York State-1880s Vernon County, Missouri). I&#8217;m hoping his pension provides a clue as to Alfred&#8217;s origins or that perhaps family members provided testimony.<\/li>\n<li>Reka (Behrens) Ideus Kirkham (about 1872-1960) is a first cousin of my gg-grandmother Fredericka (Sartorius) Janssen. I&#8217;m hoping that her widow&#8217;s application contains details about her that I do not have, particularly information on her date and place of birth.<\/li>\n<li>William\/Willm Ehmen is a first cousin of my gg-grandfather Focke Jansen Goldenstein. I&#8217;m just curious about this one and with extended family in the area, it&#8217;s possible that one of them testified in Ehmen&#8217;s pension or his widow&#8217;s application.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Stay tuned.<\/p>\n<p>My <a href=\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?page_id=2\">connections to the above are on my ahnenlist<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve requested three Civil War pensions from my researcher contact at the National Archives and he tells me that they are not at the National Archives. Based on suggestions from him and another genealogist, I&#8217;ve decided try contacting the Federal Personnel Records Center in St. Louis for copies of these records to make certain they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}