Overview
This collection consists of pension applications and amended applications filed by resident Virginians who served in the Confederate military and their widows, as well as more than 500 enslaved and free Blacks who labored as cooks, herdsmen, laborers, servants, or teamsters. The applications contain statements pertaining to the service record of the applicants and may include medical evaluations, information about income and property, and, in the case of widows, the dates and places of marriages. Applications filed by veterans' sisters and daughters have not been indexed or digitized.
Search Tips
- Entries are searchable by applicant name, applicant status, date of pension act, and applicant's place of residence.
- Names may be abbreviated (e.g. Jno. for John, Wm. for William).
- The possible status terms are: Veteran, Widow, Disabled, Servant, "Disallowed Widow", "Disallowed Veteran", "Disallowed Servant", and Unknown.
- The date refers to the Virginia General Assembly act under which the application was filed. The possible dates are 1888, 1900, or 1902.
- Place of residence is listed as county or independent city.
- Using quotes around phrases may return fewer, more relevant results.
- Boolean operators OR, NOT and AND written in ALL CAPS may be used. By default, all search terms will be combined with the AND operator. To exclude terms, use the NOT operator before a term.
- Wildcards can be used to find variant spellings or words. The question mark (?) will match any one character. For instance, "Ols?n" will match "Olsen" or "Olson". The asterisk (*) will match any number of characters (including zero). "Ch*ter" will match "Charter", "Character", and "Chapter", and "Temp*" will match "Temptation", "Temple", and "Temporary".
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