Correspondence in Pension file of James Blackwell

On August 28, 1930, Dr. Blackwell Markham of Durham NC wrote a letter to the Commissioner of Pensions in Washington, D.C. asking for information on the following Revolutionary Pensioners of North Carolina.

• James Blackwell, 10th Regiment, Bradley's Co. enlisted July 20, 1778.
• Thomas Marcum, private.
• Thomas Blackwell, private.

The information provided in the response gives a bit of insight into the Blackwell, Pope, Cook, Clopton and Nall families of the Granville County, North Carolina area.

The digital images of the original file including the correspondence can be found at Fold3.com in the Pension file  of James Blackwell(North Carolina) which include his widow's pension W. 18613 .  Below is the information(typed by me) which was included in the 2 page letter from E.W. Morgan in response to Dr. Markham's inquiry. 

Rev. & 1812 Wars Section

October 30, 1930

Dr. Blackwell Markham

First National Bank Building

Durham, North Carolina

Dear Sir:

You are advised that it appears from the papers

in the Revolutionary War Pension claims, W. 18613, that

James Blackwell of Granville County, North Carolina

enlisted and served twelve months and twenty-two days

as a private in Captain John Dickerson's Company of

North Carolina Light Horse and was discharged May 10,

1777.

He served three months as captain in the Granville

County North Carolina Cavalry and was discharged

November 17, 1781.

He was allowed pension on his application executed

November 8, 1819 while a resident of Granville County, 

North Carolina, aged about eighty-eight years.

He died April 1, 1823 or in 1824.

Solder married July 17, 1767 Elizabeth Clopton,

who died in 1768.  He married April 2, 1773 in Granville

County, North Carolina, Temperance Pope, who died

February 14, 1840.

Digital Images from Fold3 located at :
https://www.fold3.com/image/11705429
https://www.fold3.com/image/11705430

Digital scans of original info from The National Archives (http://www.archives.gov)
NARA M804. Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application
Files. Roll 0256.  James Blackwell (North Carolina)

Info found in Probate File of my 3rd Great Grandfather

Things I found in a 118 image probate file(At Ancestry.com) of my 3rd Great Grandfather, Lemuel Manier(Manire) who died in the year 1837 in Williamson County, Tennessee.  You really have to take it in the context of the times--before emancipation and women's rights.  Not that that justifies not giving folks rights or limiting them based on the color of their skin, their gender ...or both.  Some of the pages were poorly written.  Thankfully, there were 2 or 3 copes for a number of the documents and at least one was legible.

Information in the probate packet:

• Date on which will was written & residence
• Date on which will was proven
• Listing of children complete with married names of daughters
• Name of widow
• Death info of widow
• Land description(residence)
• Additional land description & who it was purchased from
• Names of neighbors from land description
• Relationship status of daughters(marriage/divorce/widowed)
• Location/Proof of relationship status of daughters or widow
• Name of County Sheriff
• Subpoenas executed.
• Proof of death of estate trustee 
• Estate sale items
• Slave names and ages
• record of slave death including the cost of coffin
• Hiring out of slaves
• 47 persons to add to Lemuel Manire's Genealogy FAN club(term coined by Elisabeth Shown Mills which describes a research method of studying an ancestor's Family, Associates, and Neighbors--also called cluster research)

New Year's Wish in a Pension Raise Recommendation from 1917

From the Alabama Confederate Pension file of James Madison Justice.  A letter from Geneva Co Alabama, Judge W. H. Morris recommending that the widow's pension be raised.  I had to share because of the New Years wish which he included.  Note that the letter was written on New Years Day of 1917.

Roll Description : Joplin, J· B· - Juzan, Peter

Ancestry.com. Alabama, Texas and Virginia, Confederate Pensions, 1884-1958 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Image 1479 of 1555

URL:

http://interactive.ancestry.com/1677/32719_237231-01476?pid=2418450&#?imageId=32719_237231-01483

Original data: Texas, Confederate Pension Applications, 1899-1975. Vol. 1–646 & 1–283. Austin, Texas: Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Confederate Pension Rolls, Veterans and Widows. Richmond, Virginia: Library of Virginia Confederate Pension Applications, 1880-1940. Montgomery, Alabama: Alabama Department of Archives and History.

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?