The Pike County Journal. Zebulon, Pike County, Georgia, Jan. 6, 1896 Pensions Ordinary Blasingame has been notified that the pensions for Confederate soldiers would be paid about the 10th inst. Really each pensioner under the indigent act ought to have received $60 for the year 1895, but there was not sufficient money appropriated to pay all the indigent pensioners in the state. The legislature in 1894 passed a bill to pay a pension of $60 per annum to each Confederate soldier who by reason of poverty or blindness or other similar causes is unable to make a living for himself. The legislature appropriated $30,00 for each of the years 1895 and 1896 to pay the indigent pensioners, but the number of approved applicants was so large it was soon ascertained that $30,000 would [be] not more than $15 to each pensioner instead of $60. It is estimated there would be only 500 indigent pensioners in the state, but the number will reach 2,000. The governor therefore directed that the $30,000 for 1895 be kept in the treasury and not prorated until the legislature met in October, 1895. This legislature agreed to appropriate $120,000 to pay the pensions for both years. This $120,000 will give to each indigent pensioner $60, and the money will be paid to the pensioners early in January. At the session of the legislature just closed, an amendment to the widows’ pension act was pass[ed] which will prove of great benefit to the widows of Confederate soldiers. Under the act of December 23, 1890, all widows of Confederate soldiers who could show that they were wives during the War and that their husbands died during the War or afterward from the effects of wounds or injuries received in service or disease contracted there, were entitled to draw a pension of $60 a year. Under this act, the widows of ex-Confederates who died up to 1890 from the effects of injuries received or contracted during the War were entitled to draw pensions, but the widows of those who died after 1890 from the same causes were entitled to draw no pension. At the session of the legislature just closed an amendment to this act was passed pensioning the widows of those who have died since 1890 from the same causes as set out in the original act. In both cases the women must show that she has never married again, for if she marries, she is dropped from the pension roll. (Transcribed 11/15/02 Lynn Cunningham)