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Footnote.com will be the first online home of the digital pension applications

Lindon, UT (April 11, 2011) – iArchives today announced a collaboration with the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) to digitize 180,000 pension applications, or an estimated 7.2 million pages of War of 1812 Pension Applications and Bounty Land Warrants. The collection will be available on iArchives’ military records website, Footnote.com, home of more than 72 million historical records.

The multi-year project will consist of scanning the pension files at the National Archives in Washington D.C. and creating a searchable index to the digital images. FGS has targeted the War of 1812 Pension Applications as a high priority project based on the value of the content for genealogists as well as the importance of preserving the fragile records.

“Our goal with any collaboration is to honor our nation’s heritage by preserving the records of our past,” said Patricia Oxley, President of FGS. “In the specific case of the War of 1812 pension records, there is an added priority due to their frail state where not acting may mean sacrificing these for future generations.”

With the burden of proof on the applicant to qualify for a pension, those applying proved participation in the war by including dozens of vividly descriptive pages.  Details recorded include military battle stories, service dates, mentions of fellow soldiers, family relations, marriages, widows’ maiden names and many other clues significant to researchers. The breadth of information allows the pension files to tell the richest story of that time period.

“The most popular database on Footnote.com today is the Revolutionary War Pensions which is very similar content,” said Brian Hansen, General Manager at Footnote.com. “Our users have been asking for the War of 1812 pension records for some time, and I expect this collection to be very popular based on the rich war time detail it contains.  We are pleased to make these records available for free on Footnote.com as a result of FGS fundraising efforts to subsidize the production cost.”

FGS is proud to be leading the national fundraising to support this project and is actively seeking donations from genealogical and historical societies, patriotic and military heritage societies, as well as interested corporations and individuals.  iArchives is providing a dollar-for-dollar match of each donation through a provision of services. To learn more and contribute to the project, visit www.fgs.org/1812.

About iArchives

iArchives is a leading digitization service provider and subsidiary of Ancestry.com (NASDAQ: ACOM). The company operates Footnote.com, the leading U.S. military record resource on the web with more than 72 million records online. The site provides searchable original documents, providing subscribers with a view of the events, places and people in the conflicts that shaped the American nation and the world. For more information, visit www.footnote.com.

 About FGS

The Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS), founded in 1976, links the genealogical community by serving the needs of its member societies, providing products and services needed by member societies, and marshaling the resources of its member organizations. FGS represents the members of hundreds of genealogical societies and engages in projects that help genealogical societies strengthen and grow as well as call attention to records preservation and access issues. FGS can be found on the web at www.FGS.org.

Ashley Judd discovered some gruesome details about her ancestor Elijah Hensley’s service in the Civil War when she was featured on last week’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? Elijah served in the 39th Kentucky Infantry. His service record, available at Footnote, outlines his years of dedicated service to the Union Army when he was a prisoner of war, promoted to corporal, and ultimately wounded and discharged.

Although he stated he was 18 years old when he enlisted in 1862, he also said he was 18 when discharged in 1865, contributing to the assumption that he was ready to fight for the North when he was as young as 15. Each card in Elijah’s service record contributes to a chronology of events from 1862 to 1865, where he:

• Enlists with William Kirk, November 18, 1862, at Lawrence, KY.

• Is captured by the rebels, December 4, 1862, in Floyd County, KY.

• Musters back in on January 15, 1863, at Peach Orchard, KY, probably as a result of a prisoner exchange.

• Gets promoted from private to corporal on March 24, 1864, after which he was sent briefly for detached service to Lexington, KY.

• Is listed as wounded in October 1864 and “in the hands of the enemy,” after which he is “sick” at Ashland Hospital, then at Columbus, Ohio, before he is ultimately discharged by “reason of disability” on June 20, 1865.

Other papers within the service record provide further details. His right leg was amputated after he was wounded in battle at Saltville, Virginia, on October 2, 1864. His Certificate of Disability for Discharge, dated June 20, 1865, states he was born in Logan County, Virginia; that he is 18 years old, 5′ 7″ tall, with a fair complexion, grey eyes, and light hair; and that he is a farmer.

Other records of interest include:

Memorandum from Prisoner of War Records.

The 1860 US Federal Census, in Logan County, Virginia. He is age 13, giving credence to his being underage when he enlisted two years later.

His pension index card with his death date, April 14, 1909, and the certificate numbers for his Civil War pension files.

Track the history of your Civil War soldier’s service, whether Union or Confederate, in the service records available only at Footnote.com.

UPDATE:
Hopefully you weren’t awake to notice, but some issues came up and we had to postpone the site maintenance we had scheduled for Wed/Thurs.

Our new plan is to start at 12 AM Mountain Time, Monday, March 28 and finish by 4 AM. Again we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Original Post:
Tomorrow night (Wednesday, March 23 over Thursday, March 24) we will be doing some maintenance work and the site will be unavailable for about 4 hours. 

We plan to start around midnight Mountain Time, and, all going well, should have things back up and running Thursday morning by about 4 AM Mountain Time.

We know there is no convenient time to have the site down and we apologize for any trouble this causes.  Hopefully the extra sleep you can get will be something of a silver lining.

This week we sent a couple of our top agents out to The National Archives in Washington DC and Maryland on a mission to find new and interesting documents that we can digitize and put on Footnote.

Details are still spotty, but they did send back some pictures.

Krista (in black) investigating the stacks with help from the NARA staff.

Perusing paper documents. Shouldn't there be some gloves in this pictures?

We can’t wait to hear the full report from the trip and look forward to starting work on some great new content.

If you tuned into Who Do You Think You Are? last Friday night, you watched Vanessa Williams discover some surprising family history within her great-great grandfather’s Civil War pension file. Her ancestor, David Carll, a black man from Oyster Bay, NY, was a private in Company I, 26th Infantry, U.S. Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.), in the final years of the Civil War.

Checking his service record on Footnote, we learn that he served on General Jackson’s boat crew and was stationed in Beaufort, South Carolina, spending much of his service on duty in the hospital there.

The service record is like an outline of a soldier’s time in the army, while a pension file will reveal much more, as Vanessa found out. Locating David Carll’s name in the Civil War and Later Veteran Pensions Index reveals that he filed his application for a pension on August 13, 1890.

The certificate number on the index card – 1,048,798 – identifies the file, which is available at the National Archives in Washington, DC. It is there that Vanessa Williams and the NARA researcher assisting her reviewed the documents. One of the most significant items in his file was a tintype of David Carll, a very unusual and surprising discovery!

You, too, can find your Civil War ancestors by exploring Footnote’s unique historical records. Begin your search in the Footnote.com Civil War Collection, make connections, and follow the leads to discover rewarding surprises in your own family history.