Military pension records are one of the most underrated of the research records. Sometimes they are hard to get and are now fairly expensive but can provide a wealth of information.
Military service records have been kept since the Revolutionary War. They usually include the dates of enlistment and ranks attained.
The records before the Civil War don't always provide a lot of genealogical information but are still valuable for the documenta�tion of the service.
If you have a male ancestor that lived during the Civil War it is always worthwhile to search the online Civil War pension indexes. I was not so gently reminded of this fact recently when I finally checked the index for the family I am currently working on. I knew that the son of my third great-grandmother had died at the bat�tle of Shiloh in 1862 but had failed to consider it as evidence for her. When I finally checked, I found that she had applied for a pension based on his service. Her husband had died in 1857, and she never remarried so she was eligible for it. When I received the copy of the pension, it listed all his siblings' birth dates that I didn't have.
I found another relative recent�ly when I searched the pension index when I couldn't find him in any census with the rest of his family after the 1860s. There he was, and his father was listed as applying for a pension on his record.
There is no guarantee what information you will find in the records and that is a small draw�back, especially since the cost of the records has tripled recently. However, most of the time they are well worth the expense. One great-great-grandfather who served in the Civil War developed consumption and came to Canon City for a month before he died. His remains were taken back to Kansas, so without that pension file, I would never have known of my ties to Canon City in 1875.
An earlier pension record from the Mexican War of 1848 provided a copy of my grandparents' mar�riage certificate as well as docu�mentation of her death date. He had remarried and was required to prove when and where she died to provide for the second wife.
An exception to the early record lack of genealogical infor�mation was a pension record for the war of 1812 that I obtained for a third great-grandfather. He had been injured during the war and the record documented that. It also included a petition signed by more than a hundred men who had served with him and testified to his service.
The petition was sent to Washington D.C. for Congressional approval of the pension request. It listed a few relatives and a lot of his neigh�bors, and he did receive the pen�sion as requested.
As you can see by these few examples, the military pension records are an excellent source for family information. Although there is no guarantee what you will find the search is usually well rewarded.
