Revolutionary War Land Bounty Applications, Maine Land Office Vol. 15 Misc. Papers, CD
- SKU: 8129
- ISBN:
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$49.95
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Description:
The Revolutionary War 1775-1783, one of the seminal events in our country’s history, has generated a truly gargantuan amount of historical analysis of all stripes, persuasions, and quality. Untold millions of today’s three hundred million Americans have at least one ancestor who served in the war, and genealogists have always savored the joy of documenting even one more such ancestor.
At the end of the war the questions of pensions and land grants were soon discussed. Beginning in 1789, the Federal government began to grant both cash pensions and land warrants. Most of the individual states soon followed suit - almost always using land rather than cash. Soon even individual counties within the various states joined the act. There were a large number of changes made to the various laws, Federal, state and county, in succeeding years, in all cases easing eligibility requirements for former soldiers (the militia was excluded entirely from the first Federal laws, for instance and later was entirely included) and broadening the classes of potential claimants. By the 1830s the surviving soldiers were mostly over age 70 and their numbers had fallen sharply. At the same time the number of potential claimants (widows, children, grandchildren) had risen sharply, as had the number of potential voters (nieces, nephews, other relatives, etc.) affected. In a democracy the outcome was pre-ordained. By 1832 conditions had relaxed so much that it no longer was necessary for a veteran’s widow to have married him before or during the war in order to receive a pension, and some veterans and their families soon realized that a 75-year-old veteran marrying a 15-year-old-bride would create a Federal pension which would survive the veteran’s death by as much as two or three generations. Beyond this sort of obvious self-interested marriage planning, outright fraud, always a part of any government entitlement program, also increased. In what is now West Virginia so many fictitious units were created by men testifying for each other about fictitious military service that special examiners had to be dispatched to investigate and deny the worst applications. Yet all in all most applicants were more than deserving, even when their memories of events which took place 50-60 years before were not too exact.
Picton Press is very pleased to bring you on these CDs the original records of the Maine Land Office Revolutionary War Land Bounty Applications (both those applications which originated in Massachusetts before Maine became a state in 1820 and thus were shifted over to Maine in 1820; and also those applications which originated in Maine after 1820), as well as the Hancock County, Maine Court of Common Pleas Revolutionary War Pension Applications. There is an enormous amount of worthwhile information contained here which you will not find in the 2,670 rolls of microfilmed Federal Revolutionary War Pension Applications.
This particular CD contains, in Adobe PDF format, miscellaneous papers: certificate receipts, Land Office correspondence, missing certificate notices, lists of: applicants, certificate holders, rejections, records of cases admitted and copies wanted.
For a complete list of the Revolutionary War CD series, see Revolutionary War Bounty Records
