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.)



©2020 All Rights Reserved, goneresearching. All text and photos in this post are copyrighted & owned by me (goneresearching) unless indicated otherwise. No republication (commercial or non-commercial) without prior permission. You may share (tell others) of this blog as long as you give credit and link to this site (not by downloading or copying any post). Thank you.

Waiting for More War of 1812 Pension Files

Fold3 website's War of 1812
Pension Files as of today.

Is that percentage of completion about to change anytime soon? 

I have been eagerly awaiting for the War of 1812 Pension Files at Fold3.com to move beyond the 65 percent complete mark -- I swear it has been squatting at that mark for-ever. There are a lot of us with surnames that start with the latter letters of the alphabet so I know I am not alone in this wait.

The other day I got an email announcing my next issue of Internet Genealogy would soon arrive in the mail. A link to the digital version of the magazine is included in the email. I usually download the PDF file but wait to read the magazine when it physically arrives in the mail.

Something caught my eye on this cover image ... "War of 1812: More Records than Ever!" So this time I read the article in the PDF version of the magazine because I couldn't wait. The seven page article points out what War of 1812 records and/or indexes can be found where on the internet and what can not be found online. 

Now the article does not say that records are about to be added to the Pension collection at Fold3 but February is fast approaching and February marks the 201st anniversary of the ratification of the treaty ending the War of 1812. (Of course, there still was some fighting after this since it was not an instant electronic communication, or an overnight shipping, or even a pony express world yet.)

February seems like a good time to add some images, doesn't it?

This wait got me thinking:  how has the progress bar on this collection moved over the years? On February 1, 2014, I wrote a blog post about finding the pension file of Amos Butler (and his wife.) At that time the progress bar had moved to 13 percent. Doing a search of the internet proved not really helpful to determining when additions to the collection were made over time. (I remember mentioning to other gene group members when records were added but I find I had not this information down.) The Way Back Time Machine at the Internet Archive website provided some answers with its "snapshots" of various website pages over the years. Though I didn't check every snapshot, here is what I found.

• September 24, 2011, (the first snapshot of the page taken) showed the War of 1812 Pension Files collection at the Fold3 website had 71,668 records and was 1 percent complete. By December that year the collection was still at 1 percent with 113,422 records. (Remember there are a lot of pages to capture so each percentage point is a very large number of page images.)
• On February 26, 2012, the collection was up to 2 percent complete with 162,252 records. By November that same year the collection was at 6 percent complete with 413,419 records.
• The collection was up to 570,519 records or 8 percent complete in March 2013. In December 2013, the record number grew to 891,941 records or 12 percent complete.
• February 14, 2014, shows the collection reached 975,734 or 13 percent and by November that year there were 1,549,344 records making the collection 54 percent complete.*
• February 2015 shows the collection moved to 61 percent complete with a record count of 1,757,870 records. On June 12, the collection reached 65 percent. By October 3, 2015, the last snapshot available at the Time Machine, though the total record number grew to 1,899,946 records the percentage of completion remained at 65 percent. 

These last numbers hold steady as of today. No wonder it seems like it has been for-ever. Fold3 used to add records to the War of 1812 Pension Files collection on a regular basis but has not done so for quite a while.

Preserve the Pensions
website as of today.

At the Preserve The Pensions website, the numbers shown are: 4,001,500 images preserved meaning captured/scanned; and that there are 7.2 million (7,200,000) images total to be captured which will save 120,000 pension files.

Financially the fund raising drive to support this project is 59 percent complete.

A percentage of completion for capturing images is not given on the Preserve The Pensions webpage. But by my math that means the percentage of images (4,001,500 out of 7,200,000) captured is around 55.5 percent.

For me the math between the two sites has not made sense for a long time. If the total number of images to be captured is right, to me that would make the present-day percentage of completion at Fold3 more about 26.3 percent for the Pension collection. (Divide 1,899,946 by 7,200,000.) If a mistake in percentage did not occur back in 2014 (*see above) when an additional 573,610 images jumped the percentage of completion from 13 percent to 55 percent, then I can only guess that the 7,200,000 images to be captured is a wild estimate or may not be an agreed on number between the two organizations. Since the currently available images go up to the letter M for many states the real percent of collection completion at Fold3 could be anywhere in between.

Regardless of the numbers disparity in my eyes, I REALLY, REALLY hope that come February we get a large addition of new images for the War of 1812 Pension Files to honor the 201st anniversary of the ending of the War of 1812.

It's about time for an addition don't you think?

©2016, goneresearching. All text and photos in this post are copyrighted & owned by me (goneresearching) unless indicated otherwise. No republication (commercial or non-commercial) without prior permission. You may share (tell others) of this blog as long as you give credit and link to this site (not by downloading or copying any post). Thank you.

I Stand Corrected ... Upon Further Investigation It is the Full Pension File on HeritageQuest Now

HeritageQuest Rev. File

Wednesday something started to bug me so I did a bit more investigation. After some looking and comparing between images at HeritageQuest and Fold3, I have realized that HeritageQuest does now have digital images of the complete U.S. Revolutionary Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files.

Upon initial investigation it looked like nothing had changed. The first page after the file summary cover said "Selected."  Now if I had done what I did yesterday, I would have seen that, yes, more digital images of pages have been added.

HeritageQuest Rev. File Selected

One thing that did not help is that it has been almost ten years since I used the actual microfilming of the complete files while at the Allen County Public Library. I failed to remember how those files were presented on the microfilm. As the descriptive pamphlet explained: first the summary cover of the file was filmed; next were "Selected pages" for files of larger size; followed by the "Nonselected" pages of the file. When the digital collection at HeritageQuest was updated recently that Nonselected portion was added.

HeritageQuest Rev. File Unselected

Now there are still differences between the Revolutionary Pension/Bounty-Land collections at HeritageQuest and Fold3. One difference is image quality. The images at HeritageQuest are black and white while the images at Fold3 are grayscale. Just a little tweaking in PhotoShop will brighten the grayscale images at Fold3 making them even better. 

HeritageQuest Rev. Pension File

Fold3 Rev. Pension File

Another difference is that the Selected/Nonselected Header Cards used for the microfilming were not digitally imaged in Fold3's collection. (I'm guessing to save server space and I believe because the header cards are not actually in each file at the archives.) So your total image count for each file is going to differ by two when comparing files at HeritageQuest and Fold3. Of course, the file I used for comparison had to be an exception. At HeritageQuest there are 44 digital images for Caleb Foster's file. At Fold3 there are 43 digital images for Caleb Foster's file. The difference should have been 2 accounting for the two headers that were not filmed by Fold3. Using the filmstrip view I can see that a header was not accidentally filmed by Fold3 so it must be an actual page. To figure it out, I will have compare the images at HeritageQuest and Fold3 page by page to see if there is a missing page or if one page was filmed twice. HeritageQuest does not show each file's total page count while Fold3 does show each file's total page count.

The third difference is that HeritageQuest does not have an every name index like Fold3 has with its collection.  HeritageQuest simply indexes the soldier/pensioner (and widows) who applied for pensions. I again tested this with my Robert Rider of New York. He does not have his own file but he appears in the files of others.

HeritageQuest Rev. File Results

Fold3 Rev. File Results

As you can see there are no hits for him at HeritageQuest (just a guy of the same name from Massachusetts) while at Fold3 my Robert Rider can be found in three files (the fourth is for that guy of the same name from Massachusetts.)

So if you are looking for a soldier/pensioner or widow HeritageQuest will work but do check the collection at Fold3 -- you might find your guy mentioned in someone else's file and learn something new like I did years ago. 

If only we could locate that bible of Robert Rider to which Caleb was referring when stating his birth in his papers. We still can't figure out what Caleb would be doing in Robert's bible.

©2015, goneresearching. All text and photos in this post are copyrighted & owned by me (goneresearching) unless indicated otherwise. No republication (commercial or non-commercial) without prior permission. You may share (tell others) of this blog as long as you give credit and link to this site (not by downloading or copying any post). Thank you.

War of 1812 Pension Find for Amos Butler

A couple weeks ago I made a time zone conversion error that resulted in an hour to wait around for a webinar to begin. (Actually I converted correctly but had the wrong start time stuck in my head.) Having already gone through the email and basics I check each day I started doing some genealogy searches to fill the time.

I don't remember how I ended up on what I did, but I found myself at Fold3 looking at the progress of the War of 1812 Pension Files project.

Years ago (before the rise of email and the internet) we did like many genealogists did -- requested a pre-printed form, filled it out with the magic words "please send the complete file" printed in ink at the top of the form, mailed it off using the U.S. Post Office, and waited. We actually requested one ancestor's pension file twice and got a few different pages each time. But it was cost prohibitive to send for every relation's file in hopes of finding a clue for our research. And since we had the most important file, a trip to see the records in person was lower on the list of places to take a research trip.

Fortunately, the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 prompted the Federation of Genealogical Societies along with the National Archives, Fold3 and Ancestry.com to come together in the Preserve the Pensions project to raise funds for the digitizing of the War of 1812 Pension and Bounty Land files and placing them online for free. The goal is to raise $3.7 million dollars by the 2015's 200th anniversary of the War of 1812's end. Ancestry.com is covering half of the project cost by matching each dollar raised.

I was happy to see that it was now reporting the database was 13 percent complete. (The last time I checked it was more like 5 percent.) Unfortunately, most of my main surnames I want to look at are at the end of the alphabet and, of course, they seem to be scanning the files alphabetically starting with A. 

As I glanced around at what was available for each state now (it varies by state) I remembered a particular person in one of my collateral lines, Amos Butler of Otsego County, New York.

To my happy surprise I found his file was digitized and it contained 46 digital images. And an even happier surprise -- these digitized images are in color not black and white! Now I couldn't wait for the webinar to be over so I could concentrate on Amos' pension file.

War of 1812 Pension File for Amos Butler

So what did I discover?

The very first image is a header card or jacket cover that extracts pertinent information from the pages within the file. I've seen one before but this one was very nicely filled out. Some of that information on the card I have seen elsewhere. The real news for me in this case was that the file contained a "family record and sold. discharge ctf. filed in brief." Oh, joy!

Now don't get too excited. Remember, not every pension file contains pages torn from the family bible but occasionally you come across one.

Like any really good genealogist I made sure to download all the digitized page images in the file -- so I would have the complete file. Reading through the pages I realized this file mostly consisted of his widow's claim for a pension. (Sometimes you find these separate.)

When I came to digital images number 9 and 10 of Amos' file the fact that these images are in color came to life -- there sat two pages from the family bible. (They are in fact the front and back of one page.)

Bible Page of Amos and Clarinda Butler

The page torn from the bible contained birth information for both Amos Butler and his wife Clarinda North along with their many children on one side and on the other side Amos and Clarinda's marriage information.

Amos Butler son of John Butler and his wife Cloe, was born August 4th 1793.
Clarinda, wife of Amos Butler, and daughter of Benjamin North, and his wife Weighty, was born September 1st 1804
Warren B. son of Amos Butler and his wife, Clarinda was born August 20th 1821
Benjamin N. son of Amos Butler and his wife Clarinda was born Sept. 19th 1824
Hiram G. son of Amos. Butler, and his wife Clarinda was born July 10th 1826
Menzo W. son of Amos. Butler and his wife, Clarinda, was born Nov 6th 1827
Gabriel N. son of Amos Butler and his wife Clarinda, was born August 18th 1829
Sumner Ely Butler was born June 3rd 1831
Amos Butler Jr was born March 29th 1833
Deloss Butler was born April 21st 1834
Jerome Butler was born July 2 1836

Bible Page of Amos and Clarinda Butler

Waity Elizabeth Butler was born March 11th 1838
John G Butler was born July 1st 1839
Victoria Butler was born December 2nd 1840
Clarinda Butler was born February 7th 1842
Amos Butler Jr. was born September 16th 1844
Frank Butler was born March 10th 1850

Amos Butler, and Clarinda North, were married December 25th in the year of our Lord 1819

Were all these names and dates new to me? No. 

The marriage date in the bible matches the date I had from in a newspaper abstract. I had some of the children's exact birth dates but not all. One interesting thing I noted from the bible page is that Clarinda's mother's name was spelled Weighty while Clarinda's daughter's name was spelled Waity. But clearly (at least to me) it is the same name: Weighty got her name from Waite, the maiden surname of her mother (Clarinda's grandmother.) Again not spelled the same but clear in its intention.

Other interesting information gleaned from the pension file so far:

• From widow's brief: 

• Aaron and Abby Jane North were witnesses to Amos and Clarinda's marriage. [Note to self: investigate their relation to Clarinda.)
• Amos and Clarinda's cohabitation was shown by affidavits of Daniel W. and Belinda W. Wait. [Note to self: investigate their relation to Clarinda.]

• From Aaron and Abby North's affidavit: they were present at the marriage of Amos and Clarinda "in the house of Benjamin North in the town of Middlefield." [Note to self: recheck research done on the North family of Middlefield.]
• In a note accompanying Clarinda's declaration for bounty land, it says: "The above named widow is the mother of eighteen children and all of her sons are supporters of the present administration."
• In the correspondence letters: I learned that Clarinda's lawyer died while she was trying to get her widow's pension thus delaying the process. 
• In the correspondence letters: I learned that Clarinda "temporarily lived" in Cleveland, Ohio, for a short period of time. [Note to self: recheck prior research to recall who of Clarinda's relatives went to Ohio.]

In the process of analyzing this new information I noticed that though the note in the letter says she was the mother of eighteen children, the bible page lists just 15 children while prior to finding this pension file I had uncovered 16 children. Perhaps this disparity is the result of stillborn or children who died young. Another reason to recheck and compare this new information with my prior research.

I am sure analyzing the pension file further will yield more clues and avenues to research. I can not wait to see my ancestor's pension file digitized and learn if I had really been sent "the complete file" so many years ago. 

Source Citation:
"War of 1812 Pension Files", database, Fold3 formerly Footnote (www.fold3.com), entry for Amos Butler (Sergeant, Capt H. Sawyer's Co NY Militia, War of 1812), bounty land warrant no. 11143 including widow Clarinda Butler pension no. WO 35338, WC 22728; citing Case Files of Pension and Bounty Land Applications Based on Service in the War of 1812, 1871-1900; Pension and Bounty Land Applications based on Service between 1812 and 1855; Records of the Department of Veteran Affairs, Record Group 15; National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, D.C.

Note: The War of 1812 Pension Files, once digitized, are available on Fold3. They are free to search and view. If you want to download or print an image, you will need to create a log-in account which is free, no subscription necessary.

©2014, goneresearching. All text and photos in this post are copyrighted & owned by me (goneresearching) unless indicated otherwise. No republication (commercial or non-commercial) without prior permission. You may share (tell others) of this blog as long as you give credit and link to this site (not by downloading or copying any post). Thank you.