Do you have American Revolutionary War ancestors? Or widows? Or heirs? If you do,
or you think you might, then I invite you to check out the Ancestry U.S. Revolutionary War Pension
and Bounty Land Warrant collection. That's a mouthful but let's dive in. If you haven't
used this collection before then, I highly recommend you do. Because there are over
80,000 application forms in this collection, and they are for officers enlisted men from the army,
navy, and the marines during the American Revolutionary War. The envelopes contain
documents relating to the application for a pension or a bounty land warrant. So both are in
this collection. And it can be submitted by either the veteran, the widow, or the veterans' heirs.
Now some of the things that you're going to be able to find in this collection
are the name, rank, unit, time of service, residence, age, birth, and sometimes birthplace,
and oh so much more~! In fact, you might even find relatives that you didn't know
existed before. So you do want to dive into these records. Now before you dive into the records, I
do want to call your attention to two things. One to the collection description page and two to the
front matter that is also in the collection. This is the Card Catalog entry page for the
Revolutionary Pension and Bounty Land War Application Files. But down here, below,
you're going to be able to read a little bit about the pension application. What the things that you
want to explore within. Lots of great information. As well as there are several designations that you
want to be aware of. Now the other place that you're going to find some invaluable information
is at the beginning of the book itself. So whenever you find a name in the collection,
I want you to use some film strip. And go to the beginning of the documents. And what you're
looking for is not the first page of the book but the beginning front matter. And I actually think
I went too far, yeah. This is actually fantastic. And a lot of collections, I don't know if you're
aware, they do explain how the legislation worked, how the documents came to be, who the curators
are, and other bits and pieces of information to help you not only understand the records
you're looking at but understanding the historical context, so make sure you don't skip this section,
but let's say you're on the home page. How are you going to actually access this file? Well,
it actually is fairly easy. Go to Search. And go to Card Catalog. In the keywords,
I want you to type in "Revolutionary War Pension." Click Search. And now, you're
going to going to see a number of collections. But I'm going to click the US Revolutionary
War Pension. And then I'm there at the page. Now when I was filming this video, there was actually.
It actually didn't work as easy as that, I hoped. So one of the things I almost always do when I
know about a collection that I want to see is I will type in Revolutionary War "Pension" and
then "Ancestry." It's actually one of the prompts. Click on that. And now, I can go straight to the
collection. So if you start typing into the Card Catalog and it doesn't work as you had hoped,
then go on to Google, and that's a way to work around to get to where you want to go. There are
two ways that you can access these records. So the first thing you're going to do is you're going to
choose the first letter of the surname. Click on that. And now, you're going to do a surname range.
They're going to narrow them down for you. So Townley is between Thrall and Rossitracy.
And now, I need to down, uh, narrow it down again. So I'm looking for Town. And Town-s,
Town-lee. It should be between those last names. Once again, I see that
front material. I see great front material, but I need to skip ahead. So I'm going to jump to 500.
Advance and see where we're at. We're still in the last name Town with no extra
dates. So then I'm going to go ahead and do 750. And right here you can see that
Mary Town with an 'e,' widow of Stephen Town with an 'e.' So that's helpful. We're starting to get
extra letters on the end. Let's go ahead and do 1,000 because I'm looking for the surname Townley.
We're in Richard Townley. So now, I can either begin to navigate forward or back to look for my
Townley to find out where what records are for him. Now be advised that there's multiple
documents for one person. So you have to kind of find out where does a set of records for a
person begin and go through that each time, um, as you're looking for the names in the collection.
The other way, of course, is to search, so we're going to go ahead and type in the name Townley.
Now you can put other identifying features into search so that you will be able to,
you know, narrow down the Smiths. But there's only five here for the last name Townley. And
when I zoom in, I see that there's this Evitts Townley married to a Sarah. And
they're from New Jersey. And that's a good hint. So we're going to go ahead and view record. And
notice that I have a brief detail about the source. It's for Everitts, but the application
was submitted by Sarah. So we'll click through, and here's that first break card. So I can
look for these different cards to break up the contents in order to know when the packet starts
and one ends. So here we are in New Jersey- Evitts Townley. It also has another spelling, Everetts,
and Sarah. So if you see either two of those spellings, it's the same. And I've had that
problem before working on that family line. So as I go through, there are quite a lot of,
uh, records in this collection. There are selected records, and there's non-selected
records. And the selected records were typically ones that are used to establish relationships
and prove a case. And the non-selected were extra details that were thrown in communication between
offices. Hey, I need you to validate that person actually served in the military. Send it back to
me."Those kinds of non-selected things. But never exclude looking at it because it could have some
information to either help you with relationships or help you with historical context. So the first
page- old handwriting. Gotta love it, um. So New Jersey- Sarah Townley, widow of Everett Townley,
deceased, who died on the 1st of July 1826. And then some other details about the unit he was in
and who he served under. And, um, the rate of which he was paid, when he joined the military
and some other pertinent relevant details. So as you click through, the next one that was really
great is. Here is her testimony, so this is, um. Sarah Evitts went to the county clerk. And she
lived in Newark in Essex County. She's aged 85. There's just lots of details out there.
She's going to tell you what she knows about her husband's service. As well as the fact that this
is her husband and her relations. Some of these documents get really interesting. So be sure you
read them fully. So it goes on, and it says that she signed with her mark. And then she has
attestation witnesses that said that this is her and this is what she wrote. So continuing on,
the next thing you're going to find are some affidavits from people who know her. So there's
one from Joseph Lyon. And Joseph Lyon, um, said that he attended the ceremony of Sarah marrying,
um, her husband, Evitts. and so she's got to prove that she actually got married to him. There's
also going to be some affidavits where people say, "Yes, I've seen them present themselves
as husband and wife, and they had these children. One of them was, uh, by an Abner Ball. And again,
he's attesting to him being in, um, Evitts being in the community and going off to serve. There
was one interesting one in here, and that was one from Sarah Meeker, and she said that, "hey,
not only do I know he served. But he, Everetts, served... But I know that he served with my
husband." And so she's giving testimony that they were called out to militia together and served in
these different units. There was another one, and it was by Jane Stewart. It was really interesting
because Jane Stewart is talking about her father, who was the reverend who kept a book of marriages.
And that she knows that Sarah was likely recorded in it and what happened to the marriage book. She
had kind of given it away. Uh. And there's some details about that. So from here, you know, who
married Sarah and Evitts, and you may not have had that information before.
And it's just little nuggets in these documents that you can find to really
not only establish a relationship and establish dates and places but really get that
deeper meaning to make your ancestors' stories come back to life. But this is really great! and
sometimes there weren't any marriage certificates, so people submitted their family bibles! and here
is a case and point of the family bible. So they did the front page, and you can see
that it was sold, um, in 1805. And so this is her bible from when she was alive and keeping
this information. Uh. Sarah was, and this is in, uh, all of the details that she wrote.
Now the handwriting looks all the same, and a number of people will say, ah, that's probably
not that good but look at the dates that these were happening. So we have a birth in 1777. When
was this bible purchased? It has to be after 1805. So 1777, 1780, 1781, 85, 87, 90, 95, 99.
All of these happened before she got her family bible. So now, she has the family bible. And
she's written it in her hand all of the names of her children and then some extra information.
So that's one way you can kind of evaluate the authenticity of the bible even if the handwriting
is very, very similar. So keep that in mind. So there are so many nuggets in these, uh, pension
and bounty land, uh, application. So I want you to go ahead and see what you can find. And then
come back and tell me in the comments below what kind of cool stories that you found in the record
collection. If you're ready to learn more about how to use Ancestry.com to climb your family tree,
be sure to check out the playlist right above. And if you're ready for the newest video from
Family History Fanatics, check out the one right there. And if you're not from the United States
but you want to see some really cool records, you can go ahead and give them a gander as well.