FINALLY !!! My Ancestor's War of 1812 Pension Files were Digitized and Uploaded Today

It has been a long wait. And I realize some are still waiting.

It was a really frustrating weekend because the uploads stopped last week just four names from my ancestor's name and with just six names to finish off the RIDER surname. (Yes, there are two separate files for my ancestor.) But today my wait is FINALLY over.

Finally! The Rider surname is complete for the War of 1812 Pension Files.

I am referring to the War of 1812 Pension Files on the Fold3 website. The War of 1812 Pension Files are a digitization project between the National Archives, iArchive (Fold3) owned by Ancestry.com and the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) to digitize the War of 1812 pensions files which were never microfilmed but were one of the most heavily used non-microfilmed collections according to an early press release.

This project was started in 2010 with fundraising campaign, called Preserve the Pensions, to pay for the digitization of these fragile documents. These resulting digitized records will remain free to the public indefinitely. You can see (search, explore, and look at) these records today over at Fold3 for free without signing up for anything. If you want to download a record image or file then you just need to create a free membership level account. (No credit card needed.)

Six years after its start the fundraising was completed in September 2016. In review, it looks like the first images starting with the A surnames went up in April 2011. (I detailed some progress and a personal find in a February 2014 post.) The digitization project slowly progressed though a security problem discovered elsewhere at another archive resulted in a big delay of this project's progress. The delay was not explained until much later leaving genealogists and interested parties in the dark waiting for progress. The project resumed with a "proof of concept" test using M(Moore) thru Q surnames in September 2017 and if that went well the R to Z surnames would follow.

White's Index to War of 1812 Pension Files

But after finishing the Q surnames, the project's digitization jumped to "Robertson, John" skipping the "Ra... thru Robertson's with first names before John." That is about 2,698 files. (Yes, I counted. And I noticed at least some of the later Q surnames were skipped too.) The project had been progressing from A to Z alphabetically until then. If you have access to Virgil D. White's Index to War of 1812 Pension Files (2 volumes) you can see/check the progress and work done. I have noticed some Old War (War of 1812) pension files listed in the White's book have not been digitized but I have noticed if these Old War (War of 1812) files mention a widow's claim they tend to be included in the digitization. Perhaps these "missed" files are actually part of another collection? With libraries closed at present time I do not have access to the books and their front material that might explain if more than one record collection was accessed to create the index volumes.

In September 2019 I queried FGS about this unexplained jump and was simply told in the reply email that the R surnames were targeted to be completed in January 2020. A month later I queried FGS again about this completion target when after finishing the end of the R surnames the digitization continued on with S surnames instead of going back to the beginning of the R surnames that were skipped. I did not get a reply to that November email query.

Digitization continued thru the "St Oris" surname and then stopped. It was not until the first week of February that the skipped R surnames began to s-l-o-w-l-y appear on Fold3. So just eight days before the War of 1812 pension files started to appear on Fold3 in 2011 (nine years ago), my ancestor's files were digitized and uploaded today.

For those still waiting for their ancestor's surname, I commiserate. There are a couple S surnames that I am waiting on for some collateral lines. Need I say, Patience?

Now I should state that: yes, I have seen these files before because my family ordered photocopies of them thirty years ago. I believe there is a page or two we never received despite adding the "magic words" (please send the complete file) on the top of the triplicate form we mailed in so long ago. Unfortunately it is not a "family record" page from the family bible like I found in file of Amos/Clarissa Butler. But what makes this digitization project special is that the digitized images are in color not just black and white (grey-scale) and that color can make a big difference in readability of a document. And, it just looks better.

One page we received long ago was illegible because there was writing in two directions on top of each other on the same page. With the color we can now see it is green pencil written on top of black ink. (It took a long, long time for Mom to decipher much but not all of the "green" handwriting which on a black and white photocopy appeared black.) While that particular text ended up not being vital, it could have been. Remember we need to thoroughly read and analyze everything so we do not miss any clues that may yield our answers. 

So, now we get to sit and compare the digital color images to what we transcribed from the photocopied pension packet of thirty years ago. And, of course, add some new source citations to our genealogy program.

Oh, if you have not looked at Fold3 lately there is now the option to download a whole file into one PDF document with/without index and source data. That may appeal to some rather than having to download each page of a file separately.

I have been able to write just a few posts in the last few years. Life has been busy with family and more projects. One of my To-Do/bucket list items was accomplished in the downtime from this blog. I (and a sister) became members of the National Society United States Daughters of 1812 and our ancestor Seneca Rider (whose pension files are the subject of this post) is a new ancestor for the society. This is my first lineage society membership. Any other lineal female descendants of Seneca Rider just have to prove their lineage back to one of his children. (The General Society of the War of 1812, a separate group for male descendants of those who served in the War of 1812, has its own ancestor list/database so any lineal male descendants would have to prove their lineage to Seneca and his service if he is not already an accepted ancestor per that organization's requirements.)



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