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| In 1890 the United
States government included in its census enumeration a listing of
all individuals still living who had served in the Union Army or Navy
during the Civil War or who were widows of such men. It was conducted in
response to the 1890 Dependent Pension Act, which expanded
the current pension system to serve all
veterans of the Civil War. (Previously, the system only
covered those veterans who had suffered a war-related injury.)
The census was commissioned to determine the numbers of veterans and their dependents who would be served by this legislation. It was also intended to help Union veterans track down their fellow soldiers to testify in their pension claims. The census officially listed only Union veterans, but sometimes enumerators took note of veterans of other wars as well as veterans of the Confederacy. From this page you can access the census listings of veterans and widows from Augusta and Franklin counties. A chart lists nearly fifty Augusta County residents, while a searchable database contains the more numerous listings from Franklin County. Actual pension files are too voluminous to include here, but the census offers a means of gauging who might have applied for a pension. The information provided in the census details an individual's service record, including their date of enlistment and their date of discharge. It supplements the Military Dossiers located in the War Years section of this archive. |
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