In Search of Confederate Pension Records

I read an article from the Terre Haute News entitled GENEALOGY: Confederate pension records out there for the asking written by Tamie Dehler.

It has some good information for those researching Confederate soldiers but one section in particular caught my attention.

Dehler writes:

"However, the National Archives has no Confederate pension records in its files. To order these, one would have to contact the state from which the Confederate soldier served."

The last statement is not correct. To order PENSION files a researcher would contact the state in which the soldier or widow was living when they applied for pension. This wouldn't necessarily be the state in which the soldier served since the majority of states that granted Confederate pensions did not do so until 20+ years after the war(on average).

I've done a bit of research using Confederate Pension Records mainly with Tennessee & Texas pensioners. Most of the TX Pensions I have worked with were for soldiers who had served in TN.

See my Confederate Pension Abstractions for an idea of what is on the TN & TX applications. These application did vary in the questions that they asked even within the same state and year to year.

My favorite question that they asked the Soldier is:

Do you use intoxicants?